This study assesses how versatile are the techniques of classical anthropology when confronted by the ethnographically unfamiliar. Each essay seeks to elucidate an empirical problem through orthodox and heterodox uses of standard techniques.

Showcasing the ideas, analysis, and perspectives of experts in the method conducting research on a wide array of social phenomena in a variety of city contexts, this volume provides a look at the legacies of urban ethnography's methodological traditions and some of the challenges its practitioners face today.

Challenges and Solutions in Ethnographic Research: Ethnography with a Twist seeks to rethink ethnography ‘outside the box’ of its previous tradition and to develop ethnographic methods by critically discussing the process, ethics, impact and knowledge production in ethnographic research. This interdisciplinary edited volume argues for a ‘twist’ that supports openness, courage, and creativity to develop and test innovative and unconventional ways of thinking and doing ethnography. ‘Ethnography with a twist’ means both an intentional aim to conduct ethnographic research with novel approaches and methods but also sensitivity to recognize and creativity to utilize different kinds of ‘twist moments’ that ethnographic research may create for the researcher. This edited volume critically evaluates new and old methodological tools and their ability to engage with questions of power difference. It proposes new collaborative methods that allow for co-production and co-creation of research material as well as shared conceptual work and wider distribution of knowledge. The book will be of use to ethnographers in humanities and social science disciplines including sociology, anthropology and communication studies.

In the accounts compiled in this book, ethnography occurs through processes of material and social interventions that turn the field into a site for epistemic collaboration. Through creative interventions that unfold what we term as “fieldwork devices”—such as coproduced books, the circulation of repurposed data, co-organized events, authorization protocols, relational frictions, and social rhythms—anthropologists engage with their counterparts in the field in the construction of joint anthropological problematizations. In these situations, the traditional tropes of the fieldwork encounter (i.e. immersion and distance) give way to a narrative of intervention, where the aesthetics of collaboration in the production of knowledge substitutes or intermingles with participant observation. Building on this, the book proposes the concept of “experimental collaborations” to describe and conceptualize this distinctive ethnographic modality.

The Creative Ethnographer's Notebook offers emerging and trained ethnographers exercises to spark creativity and increase the impact and beauty of ethnographic study. With contributions by emerging scholars and leading creative ethnographers working in various social science fields (e.g., anthropologists, educators, ethnomusicologists, political scientists, geographers, and others), this volume offers readers a variety of creative prompts that ethnographers have used in their own work and university classrooms to deepen their ethnographic and artistic practice. The contributions foreground different approaches in creative practice, broadening the tools of multimodal ethnography as one designs a study, works with collaborators and landscapes, and renders ethnographic findings through a variety of media. Instructors will find dozens of creative prompts to use in a wide variety of classroom settings, including early beginners to experienced ethnographers and artists. In the eBook+ version of this book, there are numerous pop-up definitions to key ethnographic terms, links to creative ethnographic examples, possibilities for extending prompts for more advanced anthropologists, and helpful tips across all phases of inquiry projects. This resource can be used by instructors of anthropology and other social sciences to teach students how to experiment with creative approaches, as well as how to do better public and engaged anthropology. Artists and arts faculty will also benefit from using this book to inspire culturally attuned art making that engages in research, as well as research-based art. Readers will learn how creative ethnography draws on aspects of the literary, visual, sonic, and/or performing arts. Information is provided about how scholars and artists, or scholartists, document culture in ways that serve more diverse public and academic audiences.

This book focuses on the emotional hazards of conducting fieldwork about or within contexts of violence and provides a forum for field-based researchers to tell their stories. Increasingly novice and seasoned ethnographers alike, whether by choice or chance, are working in situations where multidimensional forms of violence, conflict and war are facets of everyday life. The volume engages with the methodological and ethical issues involved and features a range of expressive writings that reveal personal consequences and dilemmas. The contributors use their emotions, their scars, outrage and sadness alongside their hopes and resilience to give voice to that which is often silenced, to make visible the entanglements of fieldwork and its lingering vulnerabilities. The book brings to the fore the lived experiences of researchers and their interlocutors alike with the hope of fostering communities of care. It will be valuable reading for anthropologists and those from other disciplines who are embarking on ethnographic fieldwork and conducting qualitative empirical research.

Written by one of the most eminent scholars in the field, Ethnographies of Reason is a unique book in terms of the studies it presents, the perspective it develops and the research techniques it illustrates. Using concrete case study materials throughout, Eric Livingston offers a fundamentally different, ethnographic approach to the study of skill and reasoning. At the same time, he addresses a much neglected topic in the literature, illustrating practical techniques of ethnomethodological research and showing how such studies are actually conducted. The book is a major contribution to ethnomethodology, to social science methodology and to the study of skill and reasoning more generally.