The End(s) of Ethnography: From Realism to Social Criticism (Counterpoints) - Softcover

Clough, Patricia Ticineto

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0820440388 ISBN 13: 9780820440385

Publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers, 1998

Synopsis

The End(s) of Ethnography: From Realism to Social Criticism was one of the first books to bring the cultural criticism of ethnographic writing to sociology. Clough's unique blend of feminist theory, psychoanalysis, poststructural criticism, Marxist cultural studies, and science studies offers rich insights into the relationship of ethnographic writing and the realist narrative that informs the mass media from the novel to computer technology. Clough's critical readings of the works of Herbert Blumer, Howard Becker, Erving Goffmann, and Toni Morrison are gems of postmodern sensibility. In a new preface, Clough reviews the intellectual context that first produced the criticism of ethnography and offers her perspective on the current experiments in ethnographic writing. The new preface is as stimulating as Clough's original take on ethnographic writing.

About this title

About the Author:

Patricia Ticineto Clough is Professor of Sociology and Women??'s Studies at the Graduate Center and Queens College of the City University of New York. She is the author of Autoaffection: Unconscious Thought in the Age of Teletechnology; The End(s) of Ethnography: From Realism to Social Criticism; and Feminist Thought: Desire, Power and Academic Discourse. Jean Halley is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Wagner College in New York City. She is the author of The Boundaries of Touch: Social Power, Parenting, and Adult-Child Intimacy (forthcoming).

Review:

«'The End(s) of Ethnography' is a brilliant and original book. It is one of the most important social science works to appear in the last two decades. Patricia Clough is the leading social theorist in sociology today. In the new preface to 'End(s)', Clough outlines an agenda that promises to transform and carry the social sciences well into the next century, when the goals of an emancipatory, feminist social science may finally be realized.» (Norman K. Denzin, College of Communications Scholar, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois)
«'The End(s) of Ethnography' is passionate scholarship. Paradigm breaking, it has set the conversation about the foundations of ethnography that is currently engrossing researchers from many disciplines. Students find this book startling in its brilliance and totally absorbing. They will love debating the new preface. I wish I had written 'End(s)'; I am glad I have read it.» (Laurel Richardson, College of Education, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio)
«'The End(s) of Ethnography' was a watershed event when first published. Startlingly bold in intent and original in execution, the book is a passionate and theoretically nuanced criticism of the writing technologies of that loyal opposition of quantitative scientific sociology, ethnographic realism. The new forms of ethnographic writing have emerged within sociology in no small part due to the imaginative space opened up by Clough's incisive critique of the traditional ethnographic enterprise. These new forms are the subject of Clough'sbrilliant new preface. This new edition of 'End(s)' will be a must for all those committed to developing an ethnographic practice of social criticism in the age of techno-scientific transnational captitalism.» (Andrew Herman, Department of Sociology, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa)
«Patricia Clough may be our most rigorous, original, and important feminist social theorist. In this demanding, richly rewarding book, she extends the critique of ethnographic authority to traditions of sociological writing. 'End(s)' is still a subversive and exhilarating text. A sociology that absorbed Clough's ideas could not remain the same.» (Margaret Cerullo, Dean of Social Sciences, Hamshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts)

About this edition

• Publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0820440388
• ISBN 13: 9780820440385
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 142