Composing Ethnography: Alternative Forms of Qualitative Writing (Volume 1) (Ethnographic Alternatives, 1) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0761991646 ISBN 13: 9780761991649

Publisher: AltaMira Press, 1996

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author:

Carolyn Ellis: University of South Florida
Arthur P. Bochner: University of South Florida

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 this edition

• Publisher: AltaMira Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0761991646
• ISBN 13: 9780761991649
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400
• Editor: Ellis Carolyn, Bochner University Of South Flori Arthur P.