The Handbook of Ethnography

Abstract

Paul Atkinson, Amanda Coffey, Sara Delamont, John Lofland and Lyn Lofland (eds.), The Handbook of Ethnography, London: Sage, 2002, xviii + 507 pages.Rather surprisingly The Handbook of Ethnography, edited by three British and two American sociologists, arrives hot on heels of another sociological Handbook devoted to ethnography. This earlier one edited by Norman and Yvonna Lincoln is in its second edition (1994, 2000) and in preparation stages for its third. Both handbook efforts are encyclopedic in their scope mainly featuring writings by sociologists and anthropologists, while Atkinson et al volume also adds assorted other disciplines. While earlier Handbook relies mainly on American scholars, more recent volume claims that international excellence was our primary criterion (p. 1) for selection of authors. The cast includes 21 British, 20 American and 2 each of Dutch, Finnish and Australian academies, comprising 31 sociologists, 9 anthropologists, 4 education scholars and one each from folklore, women's studies and philosophy of science. seemingly aware that comparison between two handbooks would be unavoidable, editors offer a critique of earlier volume(s), indicating that their own intention is to distance themselves from the five (six) moments model of Lincoln and Denzin ... [which] can do violence to complexities of research and its historical development... [such] a chronological, and linear view of development. . .is in danger of doing a disservice to earlier generations of ethnographers (pp. 2-3). While these differences do not appear thunderous at first glance, reading all of chapters leaves one with a clear sense of strong support offered for classic ethnography, not through proclaiming its familiar canons, but rather through displaying its multifaceted progeny, deep diversities, multiplicity of methods and broad applicability. Intriguing as question of differences between two parallel volumes may be, Atkinson et al volume stands on its own as a worthy addition to gargantuan growth in discourses on ethnography.The editors hope to present a tour d'horizon of ethnographic methods and ethnographic research in social sciences (p. 1) in an undertaking that they readily agree is diffuse and beyond ambitions of any single volume. To accomplish this they organize thirty-three diffuse chapters into three sections. The first section explores origins of ethnography, various intellectual and substantive contexts, differences in disciplinary and national orientations and seminal conceptual theoretical strands involved in ethnographic thinking. To meet these ends there are rich offerings on Chicago school of ethnography (Mary Jo Deegan), ethnographic roots of symbolic interactionism (Paul Rock), an overview of ethnographic commitments of British social anthropology (Sharon Macdonald) and American cultural anthropology (James Faubion). To these are added ethnography-centred works in community studies of various kinds (Lodewijk Brunt) and less-well known fieldwork methods of Mass-Observation studies of Britain (Liz Stanley). The section is rounded out by those theoretical and analytic propositions and assumptions that have come to be associated with ethnographic work-the Orientalism problematic, so much in very fibre of anthropological thought (Julie Marcus), basic contributions of phenomenology (Ilja Maso), ethnomethodology (MeMn Pollner and Robert Emerson), semiotics and semantics (Peter Manning) and grounded theory (Kathy Charmaz and Richard G. Mitchell).The second section is devoted to distinctive domains of ethnographic research, those locales where ethnographic work has contributed definitive knowledge or shaped academic portrait of cultures involved. These are ethnographies of health and medicine (Michael Bloor), educational settings (Tuula Gordon, Janet Holland and Elina Lahehna), deviance (Dick Hobbs), science and technology (David Hess), childhood (Allison James), material culture (Christopher Tilley), cultural studies (Joost Van Loon), communication (Elizabeth Keating), work (Vicki Smith) and photography and film (Mike Ball and Greg Smith). …