Doing Ethnography Today

Elizabeth Campbell is Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Marshall University s College of Education and Professional Development, USA. Before moving to academe, she worked in community development as a folklorist, writer, and museum curator. Luke Eric Lassiter is Professor of Humanities and Anthropology and Director of Marshall University s Graduate Humanities Program, USA. His books include The Chicago Guide to Collaborative Ethnography (2005) and Invitation to Anthropology (4th edition, 2014). In 2007, he founded the journal Collaborative Anthropologies and served as its editor or co-editor until 2013.

Preface x 1 Introduction: Conceptualizing Ethnography 1 Ethnography is as Personal as it Gets 4 Ethnography is Collaborative 5 Ethnography is Hermeneutic 6 Ethnography is Creative and Constitutive 7 Ethnography Grapples with the Idea of Culture, however Deeply Compromised 8 Ethnography is Mostly Art 8 Exercise Taking Stock: Exploring your Limits and Possibilities 10 Suggested Readings 13 Suggested Websites 14 2 Fields of Collaboration 15 The Field Today 19 On the Actual Complexities of Collaboration 21 Exercise Engaging Collaborators and Creating Research Questions 24 Suggested Readings 26 Suggested Websites 27 3 Emergent Design 30 Exercise Intentional Reciprocity 32 Uncertainty and the Collaborative Process 34 Ethics and Ethical Commitments 36 Exercise Developing Project Codes of Ethics 39 Recognition or Anonymity? 40 Exercise Ethics, IRBs, and Other Subjects 41 Issues of Authority: Ethnographer as Facilitator, Research Participant as Counterpart 44 Exercise Revisiting Project Limits and Possibilities 46 Suggested Readings 47 Suggested Websites 48 4 Engagement: Participant Observation and Observant Participation 50 Exercise One Scene, Many Positions 54 Participation 56 Interlude: Equipment Check 61 From Participant Observation to Observant Participation 64 Fieldnotes: From Definitions, Meanings, and Practices to Storied Observations 66 Exercise Developing Your Own (Fieldnotes) Style 69 On Fieldnote Forms 72 Exercise Writing With 75 By Way of Conclusion ... 77 Suggested Readings 80 Suggested Websites 80 5 Interviews and Conversations 84 Living with Interviews 87 Exercise Issues for Interviews 89 The Changing Nature of Interviews 94 Exercise Interviews as Conversations 97 Interviews (and Conversations) in Ethnographic Research 98 Exercise Talking about Transcripts 104 Suggested Readings 108 Suggested Websites 109 6 Inscriptions: On Writing Ethnography 113 Exercise Making Sense of Materials 116 What is Ethnography? Redux: On the Emergence of Contemporary Ethnographic Forms 120 Exercise Writing Ethnography 126 Toward Collaborative Writing and Transformation 129 Exercise Collaborative Writing 131 Suggested Readings 134 Suggested Websites 135 Index 138