33rd Annual Ethnographic & Qualitative Research Conference (EQRC) June 14-15, 2021 Sponsored by the University of Nevada at Las Vegas' (UNLV) College of Education, we invite scholars to participate in the conference by presenting research projects among a broad spectrum of topics. Employment of traditional ethnographic and qualitative research projects provides the common thread for … Continue reading Call for proposals: Ethnographic & Qualitative Research Conference
Category: Ethnographic methods
Personal narratives and performance pedagogy
Performance ethnography has been practiced and discussed by scholars who use a variety of ethnographic approaches to research, spanning ethnography, critical ethnography, and autoethnography (Denzin, 2018; Madison, 2005, 2008; Spry, 2016). In performance ethnographies, data from research studies are transformed into performances. Joni Jones (2002) outlines 6 principles underlying her approach to this work. These … Continue reading Personal narratives and performance pedagogy
Examining the criminal justice system using qualitative methods
Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve’s book, Crook County: Racism and injustice in America’s largest criminal court, examines the work of the justice system as carried out in the largest criminal court in the US, Chicago-Cook County. In five devastating chapters, the author provides story after story as evidence supporting the key idea in the book: the justice … Continue reading Examining the criminal justice system using qualitative methods
Doing ethnography in a war zone
This semester, I'm using Doctors at War: Life and Death in a Field Hospital, authored by Mark de Rond in a class I am teaching. De Rond is a professor of Organizational Ethnography in the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge in the UK. One of the topics that he examines is how people … Continue reading Doing ethnography in a war zone
Exploring archival collections: The American Folklife Center
The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress preserves records of American folklife. The Center both conducts and facilitates research on folklife and culture. Materials include songs, stories, images and documents associated with ethnographic fieldwork. The Center takes care of over 6 million items dating from the 1890s to the present. Winick and Bartis (2016) point … Continue reading Exploring archival collections: The American Folklife Center
Summer reading: Ethnography and power
Timothy Pachirat’s (2018) book, Among wolves: Ethnography and the immersive study of power, is one of a series edited by Dvora Yanow and Pergrine Schwartz-Shea. As stated by the editors, the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods focuses on interpretive methodology, and engages with three concerns: (1) methodological issues, (2) approaches and methods, and (3) applications … Continue reading Summer reading: Ethnography and power
Influential qualitative researchers: Laurel Richardson
Sociologist Laurel Richardson is well-known for her writing about writing. In numerous texts, she provides plenty for students of qualitative research to think about (Richardson, 1990; Richardson, 1994b; Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005), along with practical suggestions for how writing is a “method of inquiry.” Richardson also proposes the use of “creative analytic practices” or … Continue reading Influential qualitative researchers: Laurel Richardson
Interrogating ethnography
Recently in a graduate class I was teaching, a question was asked about whether researchers conducted ethnography anymore. The concern seemed to stem from how much time it took to conduct ethnography. Who has the time and money to spend six years in a field setting as sociologist Alice Goffman (2014) did for her study? … Continue reading Interrogating ethnography
Influential qualitative researchers: Harry F. Wolcott
Educational anthropologist Harry Wolcott (1929-2012) has written numerous books on how to do qualitative research. His early study investigated the work of a principal in The man in the principal’s office: An ethnography (Wolcott, 1973). Unlike many of his contemporaries, Wolcott argued for the merit of an n of 1 (Wolcott, 1995). One of his … Continue reading Influential qualitative researchers: Harry F. Wolcott
Variations in doing ethnographic research
Qualitative researchers have innovated with ethnographic methods in numerous ways. In this blogpost, Kathy Roulston and Kathleen deMarrais discuss some examples of variations on traditional ethnographies. Traditional ethnographies call for researchers to spend extensive periods of time in a field setting getting to know people and learning about others’ experiences and cultures. Participation is crucial … Continue reading Variations in doing ethnographic research
QualPage 