Presents a three-part narrative about ethnography. Describes an incident instrumental in bringing about the author's personal interest in ethnographic research; conveys a partial sense of the experience of the doing of ethnography; and discusses autoethnography as a response to some of the late 20th-century dilemmas of ethnographic inquiry. (SR)

Describes an ethnographic study that was designed to understand the nature and the role of public library service based on experiences at the Quebec public library. Using theoretical frameworks, the study provides an analysis of the two basic systems of meaning that service providers bring to their interaction with users. (Contains 65 references.)…

Spindler, an anthropologist, contends that ethnography is a discipline that seeks to describe and understand cultural experiences of others. Hammond, a teacher educator, maintains that practitioners can adapt ethnographic tools to solve practice-related problems. (Author/SK)

Examines the relationship among space, identity, and storytelling in a group home for men with mental retardation. Uses participant observation, interviews, and analysis of relevant documents to explain how residents use a particular type of narrative performance to create "locales" within which they resist the constraining factors in a…

This study contributes to the ongoing scholarly debate about the relative importance of parents' resources and values in influencing parents' child-rearing practices. Using ethnographic data on children's summer experiences, the authors examine how families from different ethnic and social-class backgrounds assemble child care and other activities…

Student citizenship development is an important goal of higher education that is rarely considered through a cultural lens. This ethnographic study of a research university is an examination of campus ideologies and cultural forms that address five dimensions of civic responsibility. The findings illustrate how the beliefs and cultural equipment…

Construction of scientific knowledge can be seen as a struggle over who should define the terms and conditions of legitimate fields of research. Sociologists of scientific knowledge (SSK) have pointed to the importance of analysing scientific knowledge in the same way as other types of knowledge. This idea guides the present paper on Danish…

This study examines how a curriculum that aimed to instill in students a way of solving their everyday social problems instead became a site for replaying students' understandings of solutions approved by teachers and thus was limited in shaping their subjectivities. We draw on research in the ethnography of speaking, particularly in school…

The purpose of this article is to illustrate a mixed-method approach (i.e., combining qualitative and quantitative methods) for advancing the study of construct validation in cross-cultural research. The article offers a detailed illustration of the approach using the responses 612 Sri Lankan adolescents provided to an ethnographic survey. Such…

In this article we merge de Certeau's theory of strategies and tactics with more recent work on socially situated identities to investigate how youth in one eighth-grade reading class withstood and resisted identities of "being remedial." On the basis of observational and interview data collected during a year-long ethnographic study, we…

In this essay, the author considers the goals and uses of ethnography and qualitative inquiry in higher educational research as they are limited by commitments to verifying data and representing the "real" and argue for broader understandings of the practice and uses of such research. In particular, the author is concerned that the field's…

Research in the ethnography of literacy has led to a stronger focus on literacy as a social practice among researchers and educators. How literacy is ideological and how it is linked to issues of institutional structure and power needs more systematic focus, particularly in the contexts of rapid and unprecedented economic, cultural and…

This essay explores a disciplinary hybrid, called here, philosophical ethnography. Philosophical ethnography is a philosophy of the everyday and ethnography in the context of intercultural discourse about coordinating meaning, evaluation, norms and action. Its basic assumption is that in the affairs of human beings truth, justice and beauty are…

In this essay, Hausman states that, for centuries, Indians were only important to academia if they were dead. From missionary ethnographers to cultural anthropologists, he claims, North America has been thoroughly raked by academics seeking an authentic representation of traditional life in this space. Yet many historians, who have shaped the…

Purpose: To report on a case study that examines how the Learning Organisation (LO) concept can be applied in a Singapore school and the challenges that the school faces in the process. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative research inquiry was adopted using ethnographic methods. Data includes in-depth face-to-face interviews, observation of…