Composing Ethnography: Alternative Forms of Qualitative Writing
Author(s): Carolyn Ellis (Editor), Arthur P. Bochner
Publisher: AltaMira Press
Publication Date: 13 Aug. 1996
Language: English
Print length: 400 pages
ISBN-10: 0761991638
ISBN-13: 9780761991632
Book Description
What is it like to have lived with bulimia for most of your life? To have a mother who is retarded? To fight a health insurance company in order to survive breast cancer? Carolyn Ellis and Arthur P. Bochner have assembled innovative pieces which tackle these and other difficult questions, enlarging the space to practice ethnographic writing as the stories are told through memoirs, poetry, photography, and other creative forms usually associated with the arts. The authors demonstrate how ethnographic data can be converted into memorable experiences that readers can use in the classroom and everyday life.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Ellis and Bochner establish the need, importance and centrality of new forms of qualitative writing for interpretive ethnography . . . [establishing] autoethnographies, sociopoetics, and reflexive texts as central points of reference for innovative ethnographic practice in the next century. There is much to be learned from these important exemplars. — Norman K. Denzin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
I highly recommend this book….Each of their authors provides a well-crafted example of social science writing that is evocative, embodied, artistic, and often deeply emotional. — Barbara Tedlock, (SUNY Buffalo), SUNY Buffalo
The articles… illustrate the kinds of writing that many of us in more traditional disciplines would like to see more widely used…. Most importantly… these authors acknowledge the development of a new form of consciousness that was spiritual and political. — Alfredo Gaitan ―
Forum: Qualitative Social Research
Each [article] is meant to engage readers personally, allowing them to gain critical insight into their own lives through understanding of the writer’s lives. The editors recognize that works like these are at the fringes of academic norms. By presenting them as innovative alternatives they push readers to examine their own beliefs about what research, ethnography, and academic writing should be. ―
Quarterly Journal Of Speech
About the Author
Carolyn Ellis is Distinguished University Professor of Communication at the University of South Florida. She has been named a Distinguished Professor by the National Communication Association―the organization’s highest award of lifetime scholarly achievement in the study of human communication; she is also recipient of the Legacy Lifetime Award given by NCA’s Ethnography Division, the Lifetime Achievement Award in Qualitative Inquiry from the International Center for Qualitative Inquiry at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and has been honored with various outstanding faculty mentoring and teaching awards across her career. Her publications have won awards from the American Sociological Association, the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, and the National Communication Association.
Wow! eBook
