Ethnography and realism

Abstract

About the book: As ethnography enters the twenty-first century, it has been transformed from a method of research standing on the edges of mainstream social science theory and research. Ethnography now attracts widespread interest, not only from anthropology and sociology but also from many other genres. The four distinctive idioms of qualitative inquiry—naturalism, ethnomethodology, emotionalism, and postmodernism—each use field research to pursue different questions and concerns, posit different versions of “the field,” and specify different methods as appropriate for doing so. Emerson provides comprehensive reviews of core issues, reflecting the increased acceptance of and growing divergences among current ethnographic approaches. In addition, he addresses concerns central both to earlier periods of field research, particularly those marking the beginnings of the reflexive turn, and to those raised by contemporary, more radically representational and postmodern approaches to ethnography.