Writing Ethnography

Writing Ethnography
Author: Jessica Smartt Gullion
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 149
Release: 2015-12-30
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9463003819

The Teaching Writing series publishes user-friendly writing guides penned by authors with publishing records in their subject matter. While ethnographers inevitably write up their findings from the field, many ethnography textbooks focus more on the ‘ethno’ portion of our craft, and less on developing our ‘graph’ skills. Gullion fills that gap, helping ethnographers write compelling, authentic stories about their fieldwork. From putting the first few words on the page, to developing a plot line, to publishing, Writing Ethnography offers guidance for all stages of the writing process. Writing prompts throughout the book encourage the development of manuscripts from start to finish. Appropriate for both new and emerging scholars, Writing Ethnography is a useful text for qualitative methods, research methods courses across disciplines. “This is a must read for anyone who is learning about ethnography and is unsure about how to start writing.” – Kakali Bhattacharya, PhD, Associate Professor of Educational Leadership, Kansas State University “I love this writer because she does her homework, cares about her readers, and writes a damn good story. Buy this book immediately.” – Anne Harris, PhD, Senior Lecturer of Education, Monash University and author of Critical Plays: Embodied Research for Social Change and The Creative Turn: Toward a New Aesthetic Imaginary “In this foundational text, Gullion accomplishes the herculean task of talking about the overlooked process of ethnographic writing with an intimate tone. It is like we are seated at her desk writing along with her. This text will be required reading in my research methods courses and for my graduate students because of the meticulous breakdown of writing practice that creates a text that is both useful and engaging.” – Sandra Faulkner, PhD, Associate Professor of Communication, Bowling Green State University and author of Family Stories, Poetry, and Women’s Work and Poetry as Method: Reporting Research Through Verse Jessica Smartt Gullion, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Affiliate Faculty of Women’s Studies at Texas Woman’s University. She has published more than thirty peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, in journals such as Qualitative Inquiry, the International Review of Qualitative Research, and the Journal of Applied Social Science. She has also written two additional books, Fracking the Neighborhood: Reluctant Activists and Natural Gas Drilling with the MIT Press and October Birds: A Novel about Pandemic Influenza, Infection Control, and First Responders, which is part of the award-winning Social Fictions Series with Sense Publishers.

From Notes to Narrative

From Notes to Narrative
Author: Kristen Ghodsee
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2016-05-10
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 022625769X

Ethnography centers on the culture of everyday life. So it is ironic that most scholars who do research on the intimate experiences of ordinary people write their books in a style that those people cannot understand. In recent years, the ethnographic method has spread from its original home in cultural anthropology to fields such as sociology, marketing, media studies, law, criminology, education, cultural studies, history, geography, and political science. Yet, while more and more students and practitioners are learning how to write ethnographies, there is little or no training on how to write ethnographies well. From Notes to Narrative picks up where methodological training leaves off. Kristen Ghodsee, an award-winning ethnographer, addresses common issues that arise in ethnographic writing. Ghodsee works through sentence-level details, such as word choice and structure. She also tackles bigger-picture elements, such as how to incorporate theory and ethnographic details, how to effectively deploy dialogue, and how to avoid distracting elements such as long block quotations and in-text citations. She includes excerpts and examples from model ethnographies. The book concludes with a bibliography of other useful writing guides and nearly one hundred examples of eminently readable ethnographic books.

Alive in the Writing

Alive in the Writing
Author: Kirin Narayan
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2012-03
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0226568180

Anton Chekhov is revered as a boldly innovative playwright and short story writer - but he wrote more than just plays and stories. In this book, the author introduces readers to some other sides of Chekhov.

Writing the New Ethnography

Writing the New Ethnography
Author: H. L. Goodall
Publisher: AltaMira Press
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2000-01-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 075911725X

Writing the New Ethnography provides a foundational understanding of the writing processes associated with composing new forms of qualitative writing in the social sciences. Goodall's distinctive style will engage and energize students, offering them provocative advice and exercises for turning qualitative data and field notes into compelling representations of social life.

Tales of the Field

Tales of the Field
Author: John Van Maanen
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2011-07
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0226849643

Once upon a time ethnographers returning from the field simply sat down, shuffled their note cards, and wrote up their descriptions of the exotic and quaint customs they had observed. Today scholars in all disciplines are realizing how their research is presented is at least as important as what is presented. Questions of voice, style, and audience--the classic issues of rhetoric--have come to the forefront in academic circles. John Van Maanen, an experienced ethnographer of modern organizational structures, is one who believes that the real work begins when he returns to his office with cartons of notes and tapes. In Tales of the Field he offers readers a survey of the narrative conventions associated with writing about culture and an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of various styles. He introduces first the matter-of-fact, realistic report of classical ethnography, then the self-absorbed confessional tale of the participant-observer, and finally the dramatic vignette of the new impressionistic style. He also considers, more briefly, literary tales, jointly told tales, and the theoretically focused formal and critical tales. Van Maanen illustrates his discussion of each style with excerpts from his own work on the police. Tales of the Field offers an informal, readable, and lighthearted treatment of the rhetorical devices used to present the results of fieldwork. Though Van Maanen argues ultimately for the validity of revealing the self while representing a culture, he is sensitive to the differing methods and aims of sociology and anthropology. His goal is not to establish one true way to write ethnography, but rather to make ethnographers of all varieties examine their assumptions about what constitutes a truthful cultural portrait and select consciously and carefully the voice most appropriate for their tales. Written with grace and humor, Tales of the Field will be an invaluable introduction to novices just learning the fieldwork trade and provocative stimulant to veteran ethnographers. "Engaging and well written."--H. Ottenheimer, Choice

Writing Anthropology

Writing Anthropology
Author: Carole McGranahan
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2020-05-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1478009160

In Writing Anthropology, fifty-two anthropologists reflect on scholarly writing as both craft and commitment. These short essays cover a wide range of territory, from ethnography, genre, and the politics of writing to affect, storytelling, authorship, and scholarly responsibility. Anthropological writing is more than just communicating findings: anthropologists write to tell stories that matter, to be accountable to the communities in which they do their research, and to share new insights about the world in ways that might change it for the better. The contributors offer insights into the beauty and the function of language and the joys and pains of writing while giving encouragement to stay at it—to keep writing as the most important way to not only improve one’s writing but to also honor the stories and lessons learned through research. Throughout, they share new thoughts, prompts, and agitations for writing that will stimulate conversations that cut across the humanities. Contributors. Whitney Battle-Baptiste, Jane Eva Baxter, Ruth Behar, Adia Benton, Lauren Berlant, Robin M. Bernstein, Sarah Besky, Catherine Besteman, Yarimar Bonilla, Kevin Carrico, C. Anne Claus, Sienna R. Craig, Zoë Crossland, Lara Deeb, K. Drybread, Jessica Marie Falcone, Kim Fortun, Kristen R. Ghodsee, Daniel M. Goldstein, Donna M. Goldstein, Sara L. Gonzalez, Ghassan Hage, Carla Jones, Ieva Jusionyte, Alan Kaiser, Barak Kalir, Michael Lambek, Carole McGranahan, Stuart McLean, Lisa Sang Mi Min, Mary Murrell, Kirin Narayan, Chelsi West Ohueri, Anand Pandian, Uzma Z. Rizvi, Noel B. Salazar, Bhrigupati Singh, Matt Sponheimer, Kathleen Stewart, Ann Laura Stoler, Paul Stoller, Nomi Stone, Paul Tapsell, Katerina Teaiwa, Marnie Jane Thomson, Gina Athena Ulysse, Roxanne Varzi, Sita Venkateswar, Maria D. Vesperi, Sasha Su-Ling Welland, Bianca C. Williams, Jessica Winegar

Writing Ethnographically

Writing Ethnographically
Author: Paul Anthony Atkinson
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2019-11-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1526481421

This original and authoritative exploration of ethnographic writing comes from one of the world′s leading academics in the field, Paul Atkinson. The third book in his seminal quartet on ethnographic research, it provides thoughtful, reflective guidance on a crucial skill that is often difficult to master. Informed throughout by extracts from Paul’s own writing, this book explores and examines a broad range of types and genres of ethnographic writing, from fieldnotes and ‘confessions’, to conventional ‘realist’ writing and more. Whilst highlighting the possibilities and implications of ethnographic text, this valuable resource will help those conducting ethnographic research select and adopt the most appropriate approach for their study.

Ethnographies of Academic Writing Research

Ethnographies of Academic Writing Research
Author: Ignacio Guillén-Galve
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2021-10-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027258414

This book illustrates the use of ethnography as an analytical approach to investigate academic writing, and provides critical insights into how academic writing research can benefit from the use of ethnographic methods. Throughout its six theoretical and practice-oriented studies, together with the introductory chapter, foreword and afterword, ethnography-related concepts like thick description, deep theorizing, participatory research, research reflexivity or ethics are discussed against the affordances of ethnography for the study of academic writing. The book is key reading for scholars, researchers and instructors in the areas of applied linguistics, academic writing, academic literacies and genre studies. It will also be useful to those lecturers and postgraduate students working in English for Academic Purposes and disciplinary writing. The volume provides ethnographically-oriented researchers with clear pointers about how to incorporate the telling of the inside story into their traditional main role as observers.

Lost in Transition

Lost in Transition
Author: Kristen Ghodsee
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2011-09-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822351021

Through ethnographic essays and short stories based on her experiences in Eastern Europe between 1989 and 2009, Kristen Ghodsee explains why many Eastern Europeans are nostalgic for the communist past.