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Doing Ethnography Today explores the methodologies and theories behind contemporary, collaborative ethnography and provides an opportunity to cultivate experience with included exercises. * Presents ethnography as creative and artful rather than analytical or technical * Emphasises the collaborative nature of ethnography * Structured exercises cultivate practical experience * Includes a discussion on indexing and interpreting project materials * Provides guidance on interview questions and selecting appropriate field equipment

Doing Ethnography Today: Theories, Methods, Exercises

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