Ethnography

Reading Guides:

Anderson, L  (2006) 'Analytic Autoethnography', in Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35 (4): 373 - 95.  (A useful discussion of autoethnography which extends it aways from the usual concerns with personal emotions)
Bennett, A  (2002) 'Researching youth culture and popular music: a methodological critique', in British Journal of Sociology, Vol 53, 3: 451 - 66. (One of the critiques is of gramscian work on music and youth culture as offering only a limited ethnographic understanding. Later work, including Thornton and Malbon is equally flawed methodologically).
Berkowitz, D  (2006)  'Consuming Eroticism. Gender Performances and Presentations in Pornographic Establishments', in Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35 (5): 583 -- 606. (A flawed ethnographic study but one revealing the flexibility of gender performances)
Bourdieu, P. (2000)  'Making the economic habitus. Algerian workers revisited', in Ethnography, Vol 1, No 1: 17 - 41. (Actual ethnography demonstrated here, with its capacities to make the familiar strange and vice-versa. The article discusses the changes in Kabylian [Algerian] traditional society after colonisation in order to illustrate just how historically specific modern economic rationality really is).
Clifford, J.  'On Collecting Art and Culture' [originally a chapter in The Predicament of Culture] in During, S. (ed)  (1993) The Cultural Studies Reader, London: Routledge. (An example of this writer's famous critique of ethnography, which parallels that of Clough).
Clough, P.  (2001)  'On the Relationship of the Criticism of Ethnographic Writing and the Cultural Studies of Science', in Cultural Studies -- Critical Methodologies, 1 (2): 240 - 270 ( A reprise of the famous critique of ethnographic writing based on postructuralist feminism).
Collinson, J  (2005)  'Emotions, Interaction and the Injured Sporting Body', in International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 48 (2): 221 - 40. (An autoethnographic piece reflecting on the importance of emotions in recovering from injury and contributing to the sociology of emotions more generally)
Denison, J  (2006)  'The Way We Ran: Re imagining Research and the Self', in  Journal of Sport and Social Issues 30 (4): 333 - 39. (Brief and simple attempt at a polyvocal text. Not very inspiring writing itself, despite an injunction to other writers to be creative, passionate, transformative etc)
Denzin, N  (2006)  'Analytic Autoethnography, or Deja-Vu all Over Again', in Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35 (4): 419 - 28 (A reply to Anderson. Useful points written in an odd 'poetic' way).
Ellis, C and Bochner, A  (2006)  'Analysing Analytic Autoethnography An Autopsy', in Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35 (4): 429 - 49. (An autoethnographic reply to Anderson, written as a conversation. A few central points but I found it naff, self-aggrandising and sentimental, I am afraid).
Gannon, S.  (2006)  'The (Im)Possibilities of Writing the Self-Writing: French Poststructural Theory and Autoethnography', in Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies, 6 (4): 474 - 95. (A very learned and fairly clear comparison of poststructuralist writing on the self with the naive realism of autoethnography, especially its 'evocative' kind)
Harper, D.  (2003)  'Framing photographic ethnography. A case-study' in Ethnography, 4 (2):  241 - 66 . (An insightful account of using photographs to do critical ethnography).
Jones, R.  (2006)  'Dilemmas, Maintaining  "Face," and Paranoia An Average Coaching Life', in Qualitative Inquiry, 12 (5): 1012 - 1021 (An autoethnographic account of a 'dysfluent' coach and how to present an authoritative self. Close links to Goffman)
Stanton, G. (2000)  'The way of the body. Paul Stoller's search for sensuous ethnography', in European Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol 3 No 2: 259 - 77 (Describes the work of a famous experimental ethnographer trying to break with westernised and textual modes of understanding).
Stoller, P (2002)  'Crossroads. Tracing African paths on New York City streets', in Ethnography, Vol 3, No 1: 35 - 62.  (An example of ethnographic work on West African traders and the social and economic complexities they inhabit. Argues for epistemological and methodological flexibility).
Wacquant, L.  (1995)  'Pugs at Work: Bodily Capital and Bodily Labour Among Professional Boxers', in Body and Society, Vol 1, No. 1: 65 - 93. (A participant-observation study of professional boxers from one of Bourdieu's main colleagues. Lots of good stuff on practice and embodiment in habituses in concrete circumstances).
Willis, P. and Trondman, M. (2000)  'Manifesto for Ethnography', in Ethnography, Vol 1 (1): 5 - 16  (Opens a new journal for ethnography with a brief defence of the technique against some modern criticisms and a plea for more theoretically informed ethnography).