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In Ethnographic Engagements: Encounters with the Familiar and the Strange Delamont and Atkinson, each with over 40 years of experience as ethnographers, present strategies for designing, conducting and publishing research that contributes original insights.
Ethnography is a core qualitative research method, widely used across the social sciences. However, producing good, interesting and thought-provoking ethnography is never easy. This book provides effective research strategies for combatting familiarity in the context of empirical fieldwork. The authors rehearse ways that challenge the ethnographer to avoid taken-for-granted ideas, and to make the familiar strange. The book covers the cycle of research from research questions to publication and leaving the field and brings together the central themes of their life's work in one clearly written volume.
This book is aimed at researchers at postgraduate level and beyond, their supervisors and principal investigators, and at experienced investigators who want to improve their thinking. Any ethnographer will find ideas and proposals to help them reflect self-critically and creatively about their research practice.
List of contents
1. Core Themes 2. Good Questions and Good Designs 3. Access, Openings and Encounters 4. Initial Analysis and Focusing Strategies 5. Revisiting Data Collection 6. Organising and Analysing 7. Reading and Reflecting 8. Writing the Unfamiliar 9. Leaving the Field 10. Epilogue
About the author
Sara Delamont is Reader Emerita in Sociology at Cardiff University. Her recent books include: Embodying Brazil: An Ethnography of Disaporic Capoeira (Routledge 2017) and Fieldwork in Educational Settings, 3rd edition (Routledge 2016).
Paul Atkinson is Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Cardiff University. His recent books include Thinking Ethnographically (Sage 2017) and Writing Ethnographically (Sage 2020). Ethnographic Encounters, with Emilie Whitaker, will be published by Routledge (2021). He and Sara Delamont were the founding editors of the journal Qualitative Research.
Summary
In Ethnographic Engagements: Encounters with the Familiar and the Strange Delamont and Atkinson, each with over forty years of experience as ethnographers, present strategies for designing, conducting and publishing research that contributes original insights.
