Handbook of Ethnography

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"This wonderful Handbook establishes the central and complex place ethnography now occupies in the human disciplines. All future work will begin here. This Handbook will soon become required reading for all scholars and graduate students who wish to be knowledgeable in this complex field of inquiry. This is a stunning accomplishment. The field owes the editors and their contributors a major debt of thanks."
―Norman K. Denzin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"A marvelous achievement! The Handbook has all the marks of a winner – compelling writing, comprehensive coverage, and very useful discussions. This is a real benchmark for ethnography. It will set the background for debate and point to new directions for years to come. My graduate students will love it."
―Jaber F. Gubrium, University of Florida, Gainesville

"The Handbook of Ethnography compiles invaluable, original, critical essays on ethnographical work, earning it a place on everyone′s must-have bookshelf."
―Virginia Olesen, University of California, San Francisco

Ethnography is one of the chief research methods in sociology, anthropology and other cognate disciplines in the social sciences. This Handbook provides an unparalleled critical guide to its principles and practice.

The volume is organized into three parts. The first systematically locates ethnography in its relevant historical and intellectual contexts. The roots of ethnography are pinpointed and the pattern of its development is demonstrated.

The second part examines the contribution of ethnography to major fields of substantive research. The impact and strengths and weaknesses of ethnographic method are dealt with authoritatively and accessibly.

The third part moves on to examine key debates and issues in ethnography, from the conduct of research through to contemporary arguments.

The result is a landmark work in the field which draws on the expertise of an internationally renowned group of interdisciplinary scholars. The Handbook provides readers with a one-stop critical guide to the past, present and future of ethnography. It will quickly establish itself as the ethnographer′s bible.

Paul Atkinson is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Cardiff University. Recent publications include For Ethnography (SAGE 2014) and Thinking Ethnographically (SAGE 2017). The fourth book in his quartet will be Crafting Ethnography, also for SAGE. The fourth edition of Hammersley and Atkinson Ethnography: Principles in Practice was published by Routledge in 2019. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and of the Learned Society of Wales.

Dr Sara Delamont, DSc Econ, AcSS. read Social Anthropology at Girton College Cambridge, did her PhD at Edinburgh, and lectured at Leicester before moving to Cardiff in 1976. She was the first woman to be President of BERA (the British Education Research Association) and the first woman Dean of Social Sciences at Cardiff. She has done ethnographies in schools, and other settings where teaching and learning take place such as operatic master classes and martial arts studios. With Paul Atkinson she is the Founding Editor of Qualitative Research, and is the author of fourteen books.

My research interests are underpinned by a sustained, critical methodological engagement with ethnographic and qualitative research. This includes work on contemporary developments in qualitative data analysis, writing and representation, as well as a focus on of the self and (auto)biography in qualitative inquiry. I have led and been involved in a number of funded projects focussing on qualitative research methods and methodological development. I am currently the Director of the Cardiff Node of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) Qualitative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: Innovation, Integration and Impact (QUALITI) (2005-8).