Ethnography, with all its limitations, has as its strongest impulse the quest to see and understand “others” on their own terms and to step out of our own viewpoints in order to do so. Conjoining ethnography with mindfulness, this book aims to support the best aspects of ethnography by enhancing the capacity to listen more deeply, see more expansively, keep a check on our biases and connect more compassionately with others. Mindful Ethnography addresses a central dilemma of ethnography: the relationship of self and other. It suggests ways of viewing the world from different perspectives, getting beyond the categories of our culture and working with our own thoughts and feelings even as we aim to understand those of our participants. Chapters address various stages of ethnographic research: entering a field and seeing it for the first time, immersing in ongoing participant observation, writing up elaborated fieldnotes, analysis, the re-presentation of results and letting it go. It offers illustrations and activities for researchers to try. The book is aimed at students and researchers who are stepping into the craft of ethnography or looking for new ways in and through ethnographic research. It is for researchers who want to integrate scholarship, social activism and spiritual pursuits in order to do research that is deeply engaged with and transformative of the world.

This book provides a contemporary overview of work in critical ethnography that focuses on language and race/ism in education, as well as cutting edge examples of recent critical ethnographic studies addressing these issues. The studies in this book, while centred primarily on the North American context, have wide international significance and interdisciplinary reach and address a range of educational contexts across K-12 education and less formal educational settings. They explore the racialized construction, positioning and experiences of bi/multilingual students, and the implications of this for educational policy, pedagogy and practice. The chapters draw on a range of critical theoretical perspectives, including CRT, LatCrit, Indigenous epistemologies and bilingual education; they also address significant methodological questions that arise when undertaking critical ethnographic work, including the key issues of positionality and critical reflexivity.

"In this book an anthropologist explores how the widespread shift in popular understandings of mental health have led to the embrace of "mindfulness" as both a form of preventative healthcare and as an ethical practice"--

This book argues that the breaking and re-making of frames of analysis underlie the history of theorizing in anthropology. Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew J. Strathern note that this mode of analysis risks fabricating over-essentialized dichotomies between viewpoints. The authors advocate a mindful, nuanced, people-centered approach to all theorizing-one that avoids total system approaches (-isms) and suggest that theory should relate cogently to ethnography. Mindful anthropology, as this book envisages it, is not a specific theory but a philosophical aspiration for the discipline as a whole.

This engaging introduction to all aspects of qualitative research challenges students to consider how their research can be culturally responsive. The first part of the book introduces the foundations including theory, ethics, and reflexivity, with an emphasis on multiple methodologies, from traditional to critical and cutting-edge. The second part covers practical guidance from writing proposals to data collection, and includes a chapter dedicated to creating a culturally responsive relationship with research participants. Finally, readers engage with how the quality of research is enhanced, how data are analyzed, and how research accounts are created and disseminated. Areas vital to the health of qualitative research are addressed including systemic racism and cultural humility, with cutting-edge suggestions offered in areas like hybrid research, harnessing technology, and use of social media. Multiple identities are centered in examples throughout including race, gender, and those who are hard to reach or seldom heard in research. Textboxes featuring scholars, student researchers, and community members invite readers into dialogue in an area that is contested, swiftly shifting, and always vibrant with potential.

This book presents a guideline for turning any organisation into a more mindful one, allowing it to manage unexpected events and develop stronger resilience. The author conducted empirical research with a German IT company’s staff and its leadership in a longitudinal way. The whole team was trained in individual mindfulness competencies. Individual mindfulness is a state of being that can be developed through mindfulness mediation. When combined with social interactions, cultural adaptations and structural changes, collective mindfulness develops. Collective mindfulness allows an organisation to become more agile. The author argues that mindfulness training influences the openness and knowledge-sharing behaviour of an organisation, first on an individual and then a collective level. Such training can generate awareness, increase empathy between the team members, and lead towards a more successful organisation. This study can inspire team managers to improve the work environment as well as academics to update their current level of research in the field of individual and collective mindfulness.

This innovative introduction to research in the social sciences guides students and new researchers through the maze of research traditions, cultures of inquiry and epistemological frameworks. It introduces the underlying logic of ten cultures of inquiry: ethnography; quantitative behavioral science; phenomenology; action research; hermeneutics; evaluation research; feminist research; critical social science; historical-comparative research; and theoretical research. It clarifies conceptual and intellectual traditions in research, and puts researchers firmly in the investigative saddle - able to choose, justify, and explain the intellectual framework and personal rationale of their research.