What distinguishes ethnographic study from other qualitative inquiry is that it requires researchers to enter and navigate a "natural" social setting or a field. Fields can be drastically different depending on the discipline, research area, and topic, yet all share that they exist independently of being researched. Fields are more or less refined social worlds that typically have their own social organization, history, beliefs and values, code of conduct, and spatial habitat while being embedded within a larger society and culture. The people who inhabit fields are commonly called members. Most fields furnish a variety of social positions, or roles, that members occupy; there usually is a distinction between regular members and leaders, and there may be additional parts for complementary or supporting actors. As ...

There are a range of roles that can be played by ethnographers in field research. The choice of role will affect the type of information available to the researcher and the kind of ethnography written. The authors discuss the problems and advantages at each level of involvement and give examples of modern ethnographic studies.

There are a range of roles that can be played by ethnographers in field research. The choice of role will affect the type of information available to the researcher and the kind of ethnography written. The authors discuss the problems and advantages at each level of involvement and give examples of modern ethnographic studies.

How do you gain entry into a research setting? What tricks are there to learning the rules of the community without alienating the people you came to study? How are good relations maintained with informants? What happens after you leave the field? In Experiencing Fieldwork top ethnographers address these and other questions, bring fieldwork alive for the reader and provide invaluable advice for those entering the field.

This timely and topical look at the role of ethics in fieldwork takes into account some of the major issues confronting qualitative researchers. The main purposes of this book are twofold: to promote an understanding of the harmful possibilities of fieldwork; and to provide ways of dealing with ethical problems and dilemmas. To these ends, examples of actual fieldwork are provided that address ethical problems and dilemmas, and posit ways of dealing with them.

This book discusses the personal and professional challenges of conducting fieldwork in the difficult, sometimes threatening contexts of the transforming societies of post-socialist Europe and China. Field research is a distinctly human effort and the social relationships between researchers, third parties and respondents directly affect the quality of research findings. With unusual frankness, the authors share their personal field experiences and discuss both the imaginative strategies they have devised to cope with problems and the methodological lessons they have learned.

′This is an excellent collection of papers which celebrates the best of traditional approaches to fieldwork, whilst also looking to its future. The Handbook will quickly become essential reading for the novice and experienced fieldworker across many of the social sciences′ - Chris Pole, University of Leicester Fieldwork is widely practiced but little written about, yet accounts of the exotic, mundane, complex and often dangerous are central to not only sociology and anthropology but also geography, social psychology and criminology. In all these - increasingly overlapping - fields, experience underlies any comprehensive understanding of social life. The SAGE Handbook of Fieldwork presents the first major overview of this method in all its variety, introducing the reader to the strengths, weaknesses, and ′real world′ applications of fieldwork techniques. Its 22 carefully chosen chapters are each based on a substantive field of empirical enquiry, written by an acknowledged expert in the field. The range is impressive: from the traditional to the virtual, concerning subjects as diverse as emotion, sexuality, sport, embodiment, identity, self-narrative, fieldwork in organizations, science and technology. Specifically intended for use in undergraduate and postgraduate courses in qualitative research design and methodology in sociology, anthropology, criminology, urban studies, social geography, public health and education, the handbook will also prove beneficial to academic researchers in these and other disciplines.