This book calls for those interested in robust construction research to embrace ethnography – in all its forms, including rapid ethnographies, ethnographic-action research, autoethnography, as well as longer-term ethnographies. The diversification of ethnographic approaches, as well as ethnographers, will lead to rich insights that can advance the industry theoretically and practically. We share experiences, key considerations and recommendations from leading construction ethnographic researchers from around the world to provide discussion, reflection and understanding into doing ethnography in the construction industry. This book is aimed at academics, students, consultants, editors, reviewers, policymakers, funders and others interested in robust research in the construction industry and built environment but will also be useful for those undertaking research within organisations in other industries.

Examining human-animal relations among the reindeer hunting and herding Dukha community in northern Mongolia, this book focuses on concepts such as domestication and wildness from an indigenous perspective. By looking into hunting rituals and herding techniques, the ethnography questions the dynamics between people, domesticated reindeer, and wild animals. It focuses on the role of the spirited landscape which embraces all living creatures and acts as a unifying concept at the center of the human and non-human relations.

Harry Wolcott discusses the fundamental nature of ethnographic studies, offering important suggestions on improving and deepening research practices for both novice and expert researchers.

This book argues that ‘ethnographic thinking’—the thought processes and patterns ethnographers develop through their practice—offers companies and organizations the cultural insights they need to develop fully-informed strategies. Using real world examples, Hasbrouck demonstrates how shifting the value of ethnography from simply identifying consumer needs to driving a more holistic understanding of a company or organization can help it benefit from a deeper understanding of the dynamic and interactive cultural contexts of its offerings. In doing so, he argues that such an approach can also enhance the strategic value of their work by helping them increase appreciation for openness and exploration, hone interpretive skills, and cultivate holistic thinking, in order to broaden perspectives, challenge assumptions, and cross-pollinate ideas between differing viewpoints. Ethnographic Thinking is key reading for managers and strategists specifically wishing to tap-into the potential that ethnography offers, as well as those searching more broadly for new ways to innovate practice. It is essential reading for students of applied ethnography, and recommended for scholars too.

"An accessible and entertaining read, useful to anybody interested in the ethnographic method." - Paul Miller, University of Cumbria "A very good introduction to ethnographic research, particularly useful for first time researchers." - Heather Macdonald, Chester University "The perfect introductory guide for students embarking on qualitative research for the first time... This should be of aid to the ethnographic novice in their navigating what is a theoretically complex and changing methodological field." - Patrick Turner, London Metropolitan University An accessible, authoritative, non-nonsense guide to the key concepts in one of the most widely used methodologies in social science: Ethnography, this book: Explores and summarises the basic and related issues in ethnography that are covered nowhere else in a single text. Examines key topics like sampling, generalising, participant observation and rapport, as well as embracing new fields such as virtual, visual and multi-sighted ethnography and issues such as reflexivity, writing and ethics. Presents each concept comprehensively yet critically, alongside relevant examples. This is not quite an encyclopaedia but far more than a dictionary. It is comprehensive yet brief. It is small and neat, easy to hold and flick through. It is what students and researchers have been waiting for.

Cutting though the exaggerated and fanciful beliefs about the new possibilities of `net life′, Hine produces a distinctive understanding of the significance of the Internet and addresses such questions as: what challenges do the new technologies of communication pose for research methods? Does the Internet force us to rethink traditional categories of `culture′ and `society′? In this compelling and thoughtful book, Hine shows that the Internet is both a site for cultural formations and a cultural artefact which is shaped by people′s understandings and expectations. The Internet requires a new form of ethnography. The author considers the shape of this new ethnography and guides readers through its application in multiple settings.

DIVAn ethnography in which the author’s fieldwork with transgendered and transsexual individuals in New York City demonstrates the creation and confusion of gender identity labels./div

This book shows researchers how ethnography can be carried out within human service settings, providing an invaluable guide on how to apply ethnographic creativeness and offering a more humanistic and context-sensitive approach to generating valid knowledge about today’s service work.

Eloquently interweaving ethnography and memoir, award-winning anthropologist Ruth Behar offers a new theory and practice for humanistic anthropology. She proposes an anthropology that is lived and written in a personal voice. She does so in the hope that it will lead us toward greater depth of understanding and feeling, not only in contemporary anthropology, but in all acts of witnessing.

As Alan Klima writes in Ethnography #9, “there are other possible starting places than the earnest realism of anthropological discourse as a method of critical thought.” In this experimental ethnography of capitalism, ghosts, and numbers in mid- and late-twentieth-century Thailand, Klima uses this provocation to deconstruct naive faith in the “real” and in the material in academic discourse that does not recognize that it is, itself, writing. Klima also twists the common narrative that increasing financial abstractions in economic culture are a kind of real horror story, entangling it with other modes of abstraction commonly seen as less “real,” such as spirit consultations, ghost stories, and haunted gambling. His unconventional, distinctive, and literary form of storytelling uses multiple voices, from ethnographic modes to a first-person narrative in which he channels Northern Thai ghostly tales and the story of a young Thai spirit. This genre alchemy creates strange yet compelling new relations between being and not being, presence and absence, fiction and nonfiction, fantasy and reality. In embracing the speculative as a writing form, Klima summons unorthodox possibilities for truth in contemporary anthropology.