Search

2020 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award winner Autoethnography: Process, Product, and Possibility for Critical Social Research provides a short introduction to the methodological tools and concepts of autoethnography, combining theoretical approaches with practical'how to'information. Written for social science students, teachers, teacher educators, and educational researchers, the text shows readers how autoethnographers collect, analyze, and report data. With its grounding in critical social theory and inclusion of innovative methods, this practical resource will move the field of autoethnography forward.

Like all writing, biographies are interpretive. In Interpretive Autoethnography, Norman Denzin combines one of the oldest techniques in the social sciences with one of the newest. Bringing in elements of postmodernism and interpretive social science, he reexamines the biographical and autobiographical genres as methods for qualitative researchers. Grounded in theory and rigorous analysis, this accessible book points up the inherent weaknesses in traditional biographical forms and outlines a new way in which biographies should be conceptualized and shaped. The book provides a guide to the assumptions of the biographical method, to its key terms, and to the strategies for gathering and interpreting such materials. Denzin introduces the key concept of'epiphany,'or turning points in person's lives. A final chapter returns to autoethnography's primary purpose: to make sense of our fragmented lives.

Writing Up Qualitative Research, Third Edition offers time-tested suggestions on every aspect of the process from beginning to end. In this new edition, author Harry Wolcott continues to focus on the'writing side'of qualitative research, while incorporating new features such as guidelines on how and where to use theory. This text is ideal as a supplementary text in any upper-level undergraduate or graduate seminar on the research process.

How can ethnographic studies be generalized, in contrast to concentrating on the individual case? Noblit and Hare propose a new method for synthesizing from qualitative studies: meta-ethnography. After citing the criteria to be used in comparing qualitative research projects, the authors define the ways these can then be aggregated to create more cogent syntheses of research. Using examples from numerous studies ranging from ethnographic work in educational settings to the Mead-Freeman controversy over Samoan youth, Meta-Ethnography offers useful procedural advice from both comparative and cumulative analyses of qualitative data. This provocative volume will be read with interest by researchers and students in qualitative research methods, ethnography, education, sociology, and anthropology.'After defining metaphor and synthesis, these authors provide a step-by-step program that will allow the researcher to show similarity (reciprocal translation), difference (refutation), or similarity at a higher level (lines or argument synthesis) among sample studies....Contain(s) valuable strategies at a seldom-used level of analysis.'--Contemporary Sociology'The authors made an important contribution by reframing how we think of ethnography comparison in a way that is compatible with the new developments in interpretive ethnography. Meta-Ethnography is well worth consulting for the problem definition it offers.'--The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease'This book had to be written and I am pleased it was. Someone needed to break the ice and offer a strategy for summarizing multiple ethnographic studies. Noblit and Hare have done a commendable job of giving the research community one approach for doing so. Further, no one else can now venture into this area of synthesizing qualitative studies without making references to and positioning themselves vis-a-vis this volume.'-Educational Studies

At we enter the 21st century, we are witnessing tremendous changes in the world′s culture. As it has become both postmodern and multinational, so too must ethnography. In Interpretive Ethnography, Norman K. Denzin examines these changes and sounds a call to transform ethnographic writing in a manner befitting a new age. Denzin ponders the prospects, problems, and forms of ethnographic, interpretive writing as we hurtle toward the 21st century. In this breakthrough volume, he argues cogently and persuasively that postmodern ethnography is the moral discourse of the contemporary world and that ethnographers can and should explore new sorts of experiential texts--such as performance-based text, literary journalism, and narratives of the self--to form a new ethics of inquiry. This outstanding volume by one of the premier qualitative researchers will be essential for professionals and students in qualitative methods, sociology, anthropology, communication, cultural studies, social theory, education, management, and nursing.