Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Ethnography Made Easy, Mary Gatta, Alia R. Tyner-Mullings, Ryan Coughlan

Open Educational Resources

This is an Open Educational Resource for the teaching of an Ethnography class. It was specifically designed for Ethnographies of Work taught at Stella and Charles Guttman Community College.

This currently represents a draft. We are working on ensuring that references and attributions are correct and that images, case studies and examples are representative. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please email us: alia.tyner-mullings@guttman.cuny.edu

Thinking Like An Ethnographer, Kristina Baines

Publications and Research

Learning to conduct ethnographic research means more than simply learning about the different ethnographic methods and putting them into action. To gather data ethnographically, we say we need to use ourselves--our bodies and our minds--as the tool of data collection. Ethnographers use their five senses to observe human behavior and write about what they observe, however, they need to develop those senses to help them collect accurate data. Part of this process is developing what is called the “ethnographic mindset.” This chapter outline ways in which ethnographic researchers can begin to develop this mindset.

The Public Library As Resistive Space In The Neoliberal City, Sofya Aptekar

Publications and Research

With reduced hours, decaying infrastructure, and precariously positioned staff, local public libraries provide much needed services in cities devastated by inequality and slashed safety nets. In this article, I draw on ethnographic research of a small public library in a diverse, mostly working class neighborhood in Queens, New York. I show that in addition to providing an alternative to the capitalist market by distributing resources according to people’s needs, the library serves as a moral underground space, where middle class people bend rules to help struggling city residents. Although the library occasionally replicates hegemonic ideologies about immigrant assimilation, it provides …

Studying The Gang Through Critical Ethnography, David C. Brotherton

Publications and Research

Added to the paucity of critical lenses through which the gang has been viewed criminologically is the increasing influence of the US criminal justice system on the global gang discourse. Such a lens has increased in importance as many nation states have followed the example of US repressive gang policies in thinking about crime and deviance, essentially mirroring its adoption of neo-liberalism in thinking about the political economy. In such an approach it is assumed that a coercive social control system is required to discipline and warehouse those “problem populations” excluded by the concentration of wealth and power. Across the …

The Unbearable Lightness Of The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Accomplishment Of Diversity At An Urban Farmers Market, Sofya Aptekar

Publications and Research

This article provides a critique of work on urban public space that touts its potential as a haven from racial and class conflicts and inequalities. I argue that social structures and hierarchies embedded in the capitalist system and the state’s social control over the racialized poor are not suspended even in places that appear governed by civility and tolerance, such as those under Anderson’s “cosmopolitan canopy”. Durable inequality, residential segregation, nativism, and racism inevitably shape what happens in diverse public spaces. Using an ethnographic study of an urban farmers’ market in New York City, I show that appearances of everyday …