The Ethnographic Imagination

by Paul E. Willis

In this book Paul Willis, a renowned sociologist and ethnographer, aims to renew and develop the ethnographic craft across the disciplines. Drawing from numerous examples of his own past and current work, he shows that ethnographic practice and the ethnographic imagination are vital to understanding the creativity and irreducibility of experience in all aspects of social and cultural practice.
Willis argues that ethnography plays a vital role in constituting 'sensuousness' in textual, methodological, and substantive ways, but it can do this only through the deployment of an associated theoretical imagination which cannot be found simply there in the field. He presents a bold and incisive ethnographically oriented view of the world, emphasizing the need for a deep-running social but also aesthetic sensibility. In doing so he brings new insights to the understanding of human action and its dialectical relation to social and symbolic structures. He makes original contributions to the understanding of the contemporary human uses of objects, artefacts and communicative forms, presenting a new analysis of commodity fetishism as central to consumption and to the wider social relations of contemporary societies. He also utilizes his perspective to further the understanding of the contemporary crisis in masculinity and to cast new light on various lived everyday cultures - at school, on the dole, on the street, in the Mall, in front of TV, in the dance club.
This book will be essential reading for all those involved in planning or contemplating ethnographic fieldwork and for those interested in the contributions it can make to the social sciences and humanities.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology

176 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 2000

About the author

Paul Willis is a British social scientist known for his work in sociology and cultural studies. Paul Willis' work is widely read in the fields of sociology, anthropology, and education, his work emphasizing consumer culture, socialization, music, and popular culture. He was born in Wolverhampton and received his education at the University of Cambridge and at the University of Birmingham. He worked at Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies and subsequently at the University of Wolverhampton. He was a Professor of Social/Cultural Ethnography at Keele University. In the autumn of 2010, he left Keele University and is now a professor at Princeton University.

Reviews

[A Meneses · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading something that makes sense and is all around you but at the same time is so clever you can't possibly write it, it's an amazing experience. This was an assignment for an exam and the question related to it was really simple and I didn't have the need to read all this book, but I am so glad I read it. This book is not an answer, it´s a beginning of one, a complex, sophisticated, clever, beginning of something that cannot be grasped in it's totality but this book leaved me wanting to begin my own imperfect and stupid answer because it left me thinking it's not a waste of time.

[Bethany N. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read Part 1 for Visual Anthropology: Interesting and thought-provoking concepts, but written in a highly theoretical and almost indigestible way.