Digital Commons Network^™

Ethnography Essentials: A Review, Robin Cooper

Robin Cooper

Julian M. Murchison has written a thorough and thoroughly practical resource for the newcomer to ethnography. In his new book, Ethnography Essentials: Designing, Conducting, and Presenting Your Research, he guides the novice ethnographer through the research process from conceptualization through presentation of findings. The text also includes discussion of some of the developments and debates within the field of ethnography.

Studying Elite Professionals In Transnational Settings, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

Er Du Megarig, Behøver Du Ikke At Følge Loven, John Hansen

Brooke Harrington

Sådan Slipper De Ultra-Rige For Skat, Kreditorer Og Dyre Skilsmisser, Tor Johannesson

Brooke Harrington

Volunteering For Development: Tensions Around Conducting Multi-Sited Ethnography With Volunteers, Nichole Georgeou

Nichole Georgeou

A scholarly and personal account of the ethical, and human issues and values involved in a specific example of ethnographic research and field-work, with wider research implications and relevance.

Immersion Ethnography Of Elites, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

This chapter considers the practice of "immersion ethnography" in terms of its contributions to knowledge, as well as its demands and its history as a methodology within social science. Four recent books are examined as illustrations of the technique: Mears' (2011) "Pricing Beauty," Ho's (2009) "Liquidated," Khan's (2011) "Privilege," and Zaloom's (2006) "Out of the Pits."

A Simple Introduction To The Practice Of Ethnography And Guide To Ethnographic Fieldnotes, Brian A. Hoey

Brian A. Hoey, Ph.D.

In this article, I will provide a simple introduction to the practice of ethnographic fieldwork. Ethnographic approaches, while born of the work conducted by anthropologists over one hundred years ago, are increasingly employed by researchers and others from a variety of backgrounds and for a multitude of purposes from the academic to the applied and even the commercial. In this article, I will provide an introduction intended for those new to this approach but who have already had some basic experience or training. I also provide a discussion of the centrality of fieldnotes to the conduct of this very personally …

5th Annual Afro-Latino Lecture Series - Lubaraun, Aajay Murphy

Aajay Murphy

A poster for the screening of the film "Lubaraun" in conjunction with the 5th Annual Afro-Latino Lecture Series.

Review Of Reclaiming Basque By Kathryn Woolard, Jacqueline Urla

Jacqueline L. Urla

Book Review of Reclaiming Basque by Kathryn Woolard. American Ethnologist February 2014.

Visual Approaches And Photography For The Study Of Immediate Information Space, Jenna K. Hartel, Leslie Thomson

Jenna Hartel

This methods-oriented paper introduces visual methods and specifically photography to study immediate information space (Lee, 2003); that is, information-rich settings such as offices or homes. It draws upon the authors’ firsthand ethnographic field experiences, a review of relevant theoretical and methodological literature, and an analysis of cases within information studies that have made use of visual and photographic techniques. To begin, the traditions of visual research within anthropology and sociology are traced and major epistemological, methodological, and disciplinary debates associated with visual scholarship are presented. Then, investigations of immediate information space that utilize photography are analyzed, including examples from the …

The Shanti Sena “Peace Center” And The Non-Policing Of An Anarchist Temporary Autonomous Zone: Rainbow Family Peacekeeping Strategies, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.

Michael I Niman Ph.D.

This article utilizes ethnographic methods and government documents to examine the self-policing and peacekeeping strategies of the Rainbow Family, a nonviolent acephalous intentional community that holds massive weeklong gatherings around the globe. It is a case study that examines the efficacy of these methods, comparing them to those traditional police agencies employ under similar conditions. It contextualizes these strategies by examining other utopian and anarchist communities and movements such as Critical Mass bike rides. This study demonstrates how smiling, chanting, listening, social pressure, and social capital all play into forming a more effective and less violent approach toward peacekeeping.

Information In The Hobby Of Gourmet Cooking - Four Contexts, Jenna K. Hartel

Jenna Hartel

This chapter aims to characterize the information activities and information resources that underlie the hobby of gourmet cooking in America. Gourmet cooking has roots in French haute cuisine and is a manner of food preparation that entails high quality or exotic ingredients and advanced technical skills (Wilson 2003). It is featured today at many high end or “white tablecloth” restaurants, associated with cultural icon Julia Child, and has been adopted by millions of Americans as a hobby. Given its complexity to execute, gourmet cooking is information intensive and generates a vast multimedia information universe. Altogether, this hobby is a rich …

Coherence, Contradiction And The Development Of School Science Identities, Stacy Olitsky, Linda Loman, Jessica Gardner, Markita Billups

Stacy Olitsky

This ethnographic study took place in a diverse eighth grade science classroom in an urban magnet school where students demonstrate significant variation in classroom achievement and participation. In this paper, we use an activity-theoretical framework to examine classroom events in order to identify and work toward reducing contradictions that can interfere with students developing positive school science identities. We discuss several contradictions for students in this classroom, including the conflicts between social and academic goals and the inconsistencies between science and math classes. We found that in situations where students could build and use social capital through learning science, they …

Managing Documents At Home For Serious Leisure: A Case Study Of The Hobby Of Gourmet Cooking, Jenna K. Hartel

Jenna Hartel

Purpose – This paper describes the way participants in the hobby of gourmet cooking in the United States manage culinary information in their homes. Design/methodology/approach – The study utilizes domain analysis and serious leisure as a conceptual framework and employs an ethnographic approach. Twenty gourmet cooks in the United States were interviewed at home and then their culinary information collections were documented through a guided tour and photographic inventory. The resulting ethnographic record was analyzed using grounded theory and NVivo software. Findings – The findings introduce the personal culinary library (or PCL): a constellation of cooking-related information resources and information …

Narratives Of Irony And Failure In Ethnographic Work, Dariusz Jemielniak, Monika Kostera

Dariusz Jemielniak

Organizational ethnography is one of the most valued approaches to qualitative studies of organizations. Much attention has been given to the development of the research process, of which the researcher's identity is an integral part. However, we believe that the analysis of research failures has been much less developed in the discourse of ethnographic methods for the study of organizations. Therefore, we have explored some of the “slips” in ethnographic work, as described in accounts of fellow organizational anthropologists. As the study is qualitative, we have adopted a narrative research method. We have divided the “slips” (i.e., errors) into four …

Conducting Ethnography In China, Leung-Sea, Lucia Siu

Prof. SIU Leung-sea, Lucia

Conducting ethnography in modern China can be highly fruitful, yet there are special-care items that seldom appear in methodology literature. Drawn from the author’s fieldwork in China’s futures markets in 2005, the first part of this paper discusses a list of practical items that ethnographers are likely to face: field access, the organizational culture of public and quasi-public institutions, obtaining trust, the scenarios of gifts and banquets, reliability of statistical data, politically sensitive areas, and personal safety.

The second part is a reflection on standpoint issues, namely Orientalism and nationalism. Ethnographers usually face tensions that arise from their roles, as …

Weirdos Riot, Media Gets It Wrong, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.

Michael I Niman Ph.D.

Michael I. Niman is concerned by media treatment of a hippie riot that never happened

American Dreaming: Refugees From Corporate Work Seek The Good Life, Brian A. Hoey

Brian A. Hoey, Ph.D.

Information Activities And Resources In The Hobby Of Gourmet Cooking, Jenna K. Hartel

Jenna Hartel

Introduction. A framework for information science based on time is proposed, derived from an exploratory, ethnographic study of information in the hobby of gourmet cooking. Method. Participant obseration of the social world of the hobby, plus twenty semi-structured interviews with hobby cooks, followed by a photographic inventory of their household culinary information collections. Analysis. Data were analysed using grounded theory facilitated by NVivo software. While coding information activities and resources, time emerged as a critical aspect of the hobby and its information phenomena. Results. The hobby unfolds as three temporal arcs. The career arc that lasts for years or decades …

Wild Capitalism: Environmental Activism And Postsocialist Political Ecology In Hungary, Krista Harper

Krista M. Harper

"Wild Capitalism" examines environmental issues in the "New Europe" of the twenty-first century. Specifically, it looks at how the meanings of "civil society" and "environment" have changed as environmentalists encounter the political and ecological realities of life after state socialism. Although environmentalism is a global social movement, environmental politics is a grassroots process in which activists creatively translate environmental issues into cultural idioms and political processes.