Interpreting the Field

This book has two central purposes: to demonstrate the importance of qualitative research through an examination of the type of data that it is capable of producing, and, to do so using first-hand research accounts of ethnographic work. In reflecting upon personal experiences of field-work, together with the research strategies employed, the authors illustrate their arguments in a detailed and accessible manner. The themes they discuss include the ethics and politics of field-work, reflexivity and data production, feminist field-work, the publication and production of studies, and an examination of the contrasting cultures of academia and what is normally termed the 'field', where knowledges are authenticated according to different rules and power relations.

Dick Hobbs is a well known sociologist and author of Doing the Business (Clarendon Paperbacks, March 1993), which won the Philip Abrams Memorial Prize for the vest first sociology book by a new author when it was first published in 1988. Tim May previously taught at the University of Durham and has been a researcher at Plymouth Polytechnic and the Centre for Criminological Research, Oxford.