Learning how to carry out research projects using participant observation and in-depth interviews has become a priority for scholars in a wide range of fields, including anthropology, sociology, education, social work, nursing, and psychology. This book, a collection of well-known fieldwork accounts covering the qualitative research process, aims to help undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars in the social sciences understand common problems in the research process and learn strategies for resolving them.Unlike methods books that treat research issues in a superficial or prescriptive fashion, this book realistically portrays, through researchers own accounts, the process of discovery and resolution of conflicts involved in fieldwork. It also shows the costs involved in the choice of solutions. Students and seasoned scholars alike will find the collection a source of knowledge, inspiration, and comfort concerning the complexity of conducting fieldwork. }Learning how to carry out research projects using participant observation and in-depth interviews has become a priority for scholars in a wide range of fields, including anthropology, sociology, education, social work, nursing, and psychology. This book, a collection of well-known fieldwork accounts covering the qualitative research process, aims to help undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars in the social sciences understand common problems in the research process and learn strategies for resolving them.Unlike methods books that treat research issues in a superficial or prescriptive fashion, this book realistically portrays, through researchers own accounts, the process of discovery and resolution of conflicts involved in fieldwork. It also shows the costs involved in the choice of solutions. Students and seasoned scholars alike will find the collection a source of knowledge, inspiration, and comfort concerning the complexity of conducting fieldwork. }

Learning how to carry out research projects using participant observation and in-depth interviews has become a priority for scholars in a wide range of fields, including anthropology, sociology, education, social work, nursing, and psychology. This book, a collection of well-known fieldwork accounts covering the qualitative research process, aims to help undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars in the social sciences understand common problems in the research process and learn strategies for resolving them.Unlike methods books that treat research issues in a superficial or prescriptive fashion, this book realistically portrays, through researchers own accounts, the process of discovery and resolution of conflicts involved in fieldwork. It also shows the costs involved in the choice of solutions. Students and seasoned scholars alike will find the collection a source of knowledge, inspiration, and comfort concerning the complexity of conducting fieldwork. }Learning how to carry out research projects using participant observation and in-depth interviews has become a priority for scholars in a wide range of fields, including anthropology, sociology, education, social work, nursing, and psychology. This book, a collection of well-known fieldwork accounts covering the qualitative research process, aims to help undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars in the social sciences understand common problems in the research process and learn strategies for resolving them.Unlike methods books that treat research issues in a superficial or prescriptive fashion, this book realistically portrays, through researchers own accounts, the process of discovery and resolution of conflicts involved in fieldwork. It also shows the costs involved in the choice of solutions. Students and seasoned scholars alike will find the collection a source of knowledge, inspiration, and comfort concerning the complexity of conducting fieldwork. }

Through an 'ethnography of ethnographers', this volume explores the varied ways in which anthropologists become and remain attracted to the discipline. The contributors reflect on the initial preconceptions, assumptions and expectations of themselves as young anthropologists, and on the ways in which early decisions are made about fieldwork and about the selection of field locations. They question how fieldworkers come to understand what anthropology is, both as a profession and as a personal experience, through their commitments in the field, in academic departments and in contexts where their 'specialist knowledge' is called upon and applied. They discuss the nature of reflexivity that emerges out of anthropological practices, and the ways in which this reflexivity affects ethnographic practices. Providing reflections on fieldwork in such diverse places as Alaska, Melanesia, New York and India, the volume critically reflects on the field as a culturally constructed site, with blurred boundaries that allow the personal and the professional to permeate each other. It addresses the 'politics of location' that shape the anthropologists' involvement in 'the field', in teaching rooms, in development projects and in activist engagements. The journeys described extend beyond 'the field' and into inter-disciplinary projects, commissions, colleges and personal spheres. These original and critical contributions provide fascinating insights into the relationship between anthropologists and the nature of the discipline.

A thoughtfully crafted, imaginative, and powerfully written memoir by a respected anthropologist with more than five decades of experience as an ethnographer, author, editor, and beloved mentor that should be required reading for all anthropologists. Whitten makes the case for serious ethnography as the foundation of anthropological theory.

"An accessible and entertaining read, useful to anybody interested in the ethnographic method." - Paul Miller, University of Cumbria "A very good introduction to ethnographic research, particularly useful for first time researchers." - Heather Macdonald, Chester University "The perfect introductory guide for students embarking on qualitative research for the first time... This should be of aid to the ethnographic novice in their navigating what is a theoretically complex and changing methodological field." - Patrick Turner, London Metropolitan University An accessible, authoritative, non-nonsense guide to the key concepts in one of the most widely used methodologies in social science: Ethnography, this book: Explores and summarises the basic and related issues in ethnography that are covered nowhere else in a single text. Examines key topics like sampling, generalising, participant observation and rapport, as well as embracing new fields such as virtual, visual and multi-sighted ethnography and issues such as reflexivity, writing and ethics. Presents each concept comprehensively yet critically, alongside relevant examples. This is not quite an encyclopaedia but far more than a dictionary. It is comprehensive yet brief. It is small and neat, easy to hold and flick through. It is what students and researchers have been waiting for.

This book presents a comparative study of Tristan Tzara (1896-1963) and Mário de Andrade (1893-1945), analysing their contributions to oral language traditions and to the body of criticism on modernism. This is the first work to offer an analysis of Tzara’s posthumously published prose Personnage d’insomnie, and the first in the English language that explores de Andrade’s libretto for the opera Café, as well as other examples of their poetry and prose. The Romanian Jewish poet and writer Tzara, later a naturalised French citizen, became a central figure in the European avant–garde from 1916 when he took part in the Dada Movement. Mario de Andrade, the Brazilian poet, writer and musicologist of mixed origins, was a contemporary of Tzara and a similarly central figure in the 1922 São Paulo Modern Art Week that defined Brazilian Modernism. Both emerged from very different backgrounds, but they followed a parallel creative path. This book discusses their research and adaptation of various language manifestations, ethnopoetics and folk traditions that led them to the creation of distinct and individual styles. The historical and socio-political events of the late 1930s would later prompt both authors to develop militant poetics. Through chronologically compatible case studies, the reader will discover that Tzara and de Andrade, alongside their playful language, actively criticised cultural imperialism and advocated against hate. Journeys can be physical and intellectual; they can crisscross, leave traces and overlap. This book takes the reader from two starting points, a small Romanian town in the foothills of the Carpathians, and a two-storey house in an unusually tranquil street in São Paulo, Brazil, to the heart of the twentieth-century avant-garde. As it shows, Tristan Tzara and Mário de Andrade traversed borders and geographical points, and their poetics meet in Mozambique, Parisian cafés and Bantu chants.