Uses a study of community-based development organizations (CBDOs) to describe how directors of CBDOs perceive their work. Postulates that many administrators misunderstand the mission of CBDOs to not only provide services but to foster broader change. Encourages those in the public sector to understand better and support an alternative to the…

Describes an ethnographic case study of the collaboration on the production of an executive letter for a corporation's annual report. Notes that the study used triangulation (multiple methods to view a single object) in an effective manner. (RS)

Suggests that the practice of ethnography in the spirit of Clifford Geertz's "thick description," and the thinking that this practice demands, can give college students both a tool for inquiry and a sense of their positions as authorities in the writing process. Defines thick description and discusses how ethnography works in a…

Uses a poststructuralist and postmodernist critique, anchored in Foucault's work, to inform a critical ethnography, contending that one way to open up more room for critical and imaginative dialog about fairness, decency, and respect is to encourage the play of memory in ethnographic text. The paper demonstrates the utility of memoirs as a useful…

Recasts ethnography not as the best method, but rather a strategic choice for mojado (illegal Mexican and Latino immigrant) researchers, suggesting that critical ethnography cannot be ultimately justified, for it recreates both center and border as it wishes to speak for people of color. The paper creates a postcritical ethnography for survival of…

Describes ethnographic field schools as successful strategies for improving methods training and contributing to the development of competent ethnographers and anthropologists. Introduces three essays that illustrate the value of field-school experience for undergraduates and graduate students. (SLD)

The essays in this section offer different possibilities and prospects for first-time fieldwork and make a strong case for directly supervised early fieldwork that includes peer collaboration and individual activity. (SLD)

The relationship between suicidal behavior and gender, and between gender, culture, and cultural transition for Indians in South Africa is studied. Data on suicide rates are presented. Social change, tension between Indian culture and westernization, traditional power relations, and gender are considered. Three case studies are related to…

Uses A. Giddens' theory of structuration as a framework for studying the deeply layered social interactions within the world's largest and most successful group of Alcoholics Anonymous. Finds the organization to be a "disembedding mechanism," in which structures from the global organization are disembedded by the founder, transformed,…

Argues that structural functionalism as a method for conducting fieldwork and as a format for the analysis of ethnographic data remains a powerful model, one that is easily understood by professional educators. As a heuristic device, functionalist theory can help in the solution of a problem that is otherwise incapable of theoretical…

The heuristic value of Chilcott's essay lies less in its support for structural functionalism and more in its concern to reexamine theory in the work of earlier educational anthropologists for what earlier theories and practices can add to current research. (SLD)

Focuses on the use of cultural analysis, or the ethnographic approach, as a qualitative research methodology to study an academic computing center. The study was conducted to understand the culture of computing professionals and to assist librarians in developing ways in which the two groups of professionals can work together. (Author/LRW)

Describes technical communicators' abilities to learn about software within organizational constraints and resources. Notes that these writers' tactics for learning software included using it themselves, talking to co-workers, studying program specifications, learning from comments on internal reviews, and studying old manuals. Evaluates each…

Presents a biography of John Seely Brown, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation and the director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Interests include formation of corporate strategy; corporate research, including organizational learning, ethnographies of the workplace, and complex adaptive systems; and human learning and the management of…

Examines the ubiquitous discussion of academic change, the paucity of ethnographic and qualitative research on the culture of higher education, and the need for ethnographic studies of professors, administrators, trustees, and students in an era of reform. Explains that ethnographic studies are the foundation from which other qualitative…