An Invitation to Qualitative Fieldwork

In an attempt to cope with the profusion of tools and techniques for qualitative methods, texts for students have tended to respond in the following two ways: "how to" or "why to." In contrast, this book takes on both tasks to give students a more complete picture of the field. An Invitation to Qualitative Fieldwork is a helpful guide, a compendium of tips, and a workbook for skills. Whether for a class, as a reference book, or something to return to before, during, and after data-collection, An Invitation to Qualitative Fieldwork is a new kind of qualitative handbook.

Jason Orne has a PhD in Sociology from The University of Wisconsin-Madison. His ethnography, Boystown, is under contract with University of Chicago Press. It traces the racial and sexual consequences of late-stage gentrification in a gay neighborhood. His academic work has been featured in the journals Sexualities and The Sociological Quarterly. His creative nonfiction work is in a variety of venues, from the magazine The Morning News to the anthology Off the Rocks.

Mike Bell is Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Community and Environmental Sociology and Director of the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Mike is also an ethnographer, agroecologist, and social theorist. He is an author or editor of 8 books, including two award-winning ethnographies. In 1994, he published Childerley: Nature and Morality in a Country Village (University of Chicago Press, 1994), which was co-winner of the 1995 Best Book Award of the Sociology of Culture Section of the American Sociological Association. Ten years later, he finished his second ethnography, Farming for Us All: Practical Agriculture and the Cultivation of Sustainability (Penn State University Press, 2004), which won an Outstanding Academic Title Award from the American Library Association. He is currently conducting participatory fieldwork among the amaQwathi people of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa.

Mike has a musical second life as a composer and performer. His compositions include pieces for solo piano, symphony orchestra, and various chamber ensembles, as well as numerous "class-grass" works – a hybrid of bluegrass and classical traditions. He frequently performs on mandolin and banjo with the Madison-based class-grass ensemble Graminy (www.graminy.net).