Understanding Ethnographic Texts

by Paul Anthony Atkinson

In this volume, Paul Atkinson presents useful advice on how to read, and therefore how to write, ethnography. He examines how ethnographers create field notes and how they do interview transcriptions, inevitably revealing the author′s hand. He outlines various literary conventions used in ethnographic writing and points out some of the recent experiments that have departed from traditional ethnographic style. He links these to an analysis of the contributions of postmodernist theory to ethnographic work.

58 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1992

Reviews

[Jan D · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is an intermediate-level book about ethnographic theory. The writing style is okay: it is not fun or beautiful but it is not confusing or long-winded either. This text was very useful for me to understand what writing ‘does’ for ethnographers and how the medium of text both supports and constraints learning about the field.