Newly revised, Ethnographic Fieldwork: An Anthropological Reader Second Edition provides readers with a picture of the breadth, variation, and complexity of fieldwork. The updated selections offer insight into the ethnographer’s experience of gathering and analyzing data, and a richer understanding of the conflicts, hazards and ethical challenges of pursuing fieldwork around the globe. Offers an international collection of classic and contemporary readings to provide students with a broad understanding of historical, methodological, ethical, reflexive and stylistic issues in fieldwork Features 16 new articles and revised part introductions, with additional insights into the experience of conducting ethnographic fieldwork Explores the importance of fieldwork practice in achieving the core theoretical and methodological goals of anthropology Highlights the personal and professional challenges of field researchers, from issues of professional identity, fieldwork relations, activism, and the conflicts, hazards and ethical concerns of community work.

Communities of Practice and Ethnographic Fieldwork offers a new perspective on how ethnography might be learned in real time through participation in a supportive community of practice. It draws on the experiences, knowledge, and training of an interdisciplinary group of scholars who have studied legal topics ethnographically alongside and with the support of fellow ethnographers at varying stages of their careers. Contributors address topics that are of interest to those who teach ethnography as well as to those who are learning this approach. Such topics include ethics, positionality in the field, the combination of personal and professional circumstances, and the process and pain of changing research topics. Each chapter emphasizes the role of mentoring and collective problem-solving through a lab model of fieldwork practice, particularly when carrying out research with subjects and interlocutors who may have undergone trauma. Written by a diverse group of scholars, this volume will appeal especially to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, and female-identifying ethnographers in a range of fields. It provides a framework for how fieldwork can continue moving forward even in the most challenging of times and will be of particular interest to scholars in anthropology, sociology, law, urban planning/studies, geography, political science, ethnic studies, public policy, sociolegal studies, and education.

This edited volume presents an international collection of fieldwork experiences from every stage of the research process with a view to normalising the process of adaptation, modification, and even failure during fieldwork when circumstances interrupt the expected outcomes. This book aims to address a gap often found in methodology books by including nine full autopsy-like reflection of fieldwork experiences, selected based on researchers’ disciplines and fields, the diversity of geographical locations and their differing themes. Its chapters record a swath of experience, from choosing the research themes and hypotheses through to academic presentations and publications, shedding light on an area academic research that is often overlooked. Documenting experience from anthropologists and sociologists to political scientists and economists, the diversity of the book’s approach and its multidisciplinary focus will interest researchers, scholars, and postgraduate students from a range of subdisciplines and levels of fieldwork experience.

This book focuses on the emotional hazards of conducting fieldwork about or within contexts of violence and provides a forum for field-based researchers to tell their stories. Increasingly novice and seasoned ethnographers alike, whether by choice or chance, are working in situations where multidimensional forms of violence, conflict and war are facets of everyday life. The volume engages with the methodological and ethical issues involved and features a range of expressive writings that reveal personal consequences and dilemmas. The contributors use their emotions, their scars, outrage and sadness alongside their hopes and resilience to give voice to that which is often silenced, to make visible the entanglements of fieldwork and its lingering vulnerabilities. The book brings to the fore the lived experiences of researchers and their interlocutors alike with the hope of fostering communities of care. It will be valuable reading for anthropologists and those from other disciplines who are embarking on ethnographic fieldwork and conducting qualitative empirical research.

Through a series of case studies, this book provides an understanding of the practice of ethnographic fieldwork in a variety of contexts, from everyday settings to formal institutions. Demonstrating that ethnography is best viewed as a series of site-specific challenges, it showcases ethnographic fieldwork as ongoing analytic engagement with concrete social worlds. From engagements with boxing and nightlife to preschooling and migratory encampments, portrayed is a process that is anything but a set of pre-packaged challenges and hurdles of simple-minded procedural tropes such as entrée, rapport, and departure. Instead, ethnography emerges as what it has been from its beginnings: a rough-and-ready analytic matter of seeking understanding in unrecognized and diverse fields of interaction. Crafting Ethnographic Fieldwork will appeal to scholars and students across the social sciences with interests in the practice of participant observation and related questions of research methodology.

Ethnographic fieldwork is something which is often presented as mysterious and inexplicable. How do we know certain things after having done fieldwork? Are we sure we know? And what exactly do we know? This book describes ethnographic fieldwork as the gradual accumulation of knowledge about something you don’t know much about. We start from ignorance and gradually move towards knowledge, on the basis of practices for which we have theoretical and methodological motivations. Jan Blommaert and Dong Jie draw on their own experiences as fieldworkers in explaining the complexities of ethnographic fieldwork as a knowledge trajectory. They do so in an easily accessible way that makes these complexities easier to understand and to handle before, during and after fieldwork. The 2nd edition of this bestselling book updates the 1st edition and includes a new postscript on ethnography in an online world.

The construction industry as a workplace is commonly seen as problematic for a number of reasons, including its worrying health and safety record, the instability of its workforce, and the poorly regulated nature of the sector. Ethnographic Research in the Construction Industry draws together in one volume a set of expert contributions which demonstrate how social science perspectives, rooted in ethnographic research on construction sites and with construction workers themselves, can generate fresh insights into the social, cultural and material ways that the industry and conditions of work in it are experienced and played out.

Challenges and Solutions in Ethnographic Research: Ethnography with a Twist seeks to rethink ethnography ‘outside the box’ of its previous tradition and to develop ethnographic methods by critically discussing the process, ethics, impact and knowledge production in ethnographic research. This interdisciplinary edited volume argues for a ‘twist’ that supports openness, courage, and creativity to develop and test innovative and unconventional ways of thinking and doing ethnography. ‘Ethnography with a twist’ means both an intentional aim to conduct ethnographic research with novel approaches and methods but also sensitivity to recognize and creativity to utilize different kinds of ‘twist moments’ that ethnographic research may create for the researcher. This edited volume critically evaluates new and old methodological tools and their ability to engage with questions of power difference. It proposes new collaborative methods that allow for co-production and co-creation of research material as well as shared conceptual work and wider distribution of knowledge. The book will be of use to ethnographers in humanities and social science disciplines including sociology, anthropology and communication studies.

In its assessment of the current "state of play" of ethnographic practice in social anthropology, this volume explores the challenges that changing social forms and changing understandings of "the field" pose to contemporary ethnographic methods. These challenges include the implications of the remarkable impact social anthropology is having on neighboring disciplines such as history, sociology, cultural studies, human geography and linguistics, as well as the potential 'costs' of this success for the discipline. Contributors also discuss how the ethnographic method is influenced by current institutional contexts and historical "traditions" across a range of settings. Here ethnography is featured less as a methodological "tool-box" or technique but rather as a subject on which to reflect.

This book is an essential guide to scientifically conducting contemporary ethnographic research at undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral levels in the social sciences, the humanities, and business studies. It addresses the methodological challenges of ethnographic research across the social sciences and highlights present time research areas, including digital ethnography, artificial intelligence, classroom pedagogy, hybrid organization, and many more. This volume is divided into three parts and can be a single source of reference that: Guides students through essential theoretical and conceptual aspects of ethnography Demonstrates the usage of ethnography in allied disciplines—psychology, healthcare, international border studies, linguistic, artificial intelligence, and organizational behaviour Demonstrates the application of ethnographic research in the field Presents valuable lessons from fieldwork experiences by different scholars across a variety of communities Includes dos and don’ts for early career and first-time researchers A step-by-step guide with student-friendly text, this book will be an essential supplementary reading across the social sciences and the humanities, especially for those conducting fieldwork in the Global South.