Argues against the indiscriminate use of the term "ethnography" and offers various criteria that have been suggested as distinguishing the ethnographic investigation. (HOD)

This original contributed book will become an essential text for those teaching Ethnography, Research Methods (qualitative emphasis), applied sociology, and related subjects across Canada. Chapters in the first section of this volume consider the merits of qualitative research, profile interviewing strategies, and discuss the relationship to…

Over the last 15 years or so, a variety of culture-based composition pedagogies have claimed to prepare students to take their places as citizens in a postmodern world. Cultural studies pedagogies in particular, because they tend to be grounded in neo-Marxist critical theory traditions, claim to enact democratic principles by preparing students to…

This paper introduces the Cultural Index (CI), which is composed of grounded indices for measuring cultural identity and predicting culturally-determined behaviors. These behaviors often are associated with ethnicity, which researchers have used as a predictor of culturally-defined behaviors. This use posits that ethnicity defines culture.…

This paper examines the influences on Garifuna (also known as Caribs) youth education through the voices of Garifuna educators and youths. The paper emphasizes, in both its content and methodology, that discussion of education in the Caribbean and specifically Belize cannot be separated from the educators' experiences and the adolescents'…

Shortly after a researcher arrived at a Traditional Mohawk (Iroquois) Indian community in New York State in May 1997, seven community members began using the Netscape 3.0 e-mail system with steadily increasing frequency. The researcher was interested in studying the relationship between new communication technology and identity maintenance. E-mail…

Examines Kamsa ritual language and describes a model (based on accessibility, formalization, and efficacy) for specifying its semiotic constitution. (EKN)

The design and conduct of a national evaluation study is discussed, demonstrating that a control group may not provide the no-cause baseline information expected. Resolution of this problem requires reexamination of paradigms, research practices, and policies, as well as the underlying real world constraints and views that generate them. (PN)

Discusses issues native ethnographers face working in their own cultures (i.e. the authors studying Appalachia): pattern recognition; selective reporting; economy in discovering cultural meaning; bias in informant selection, mode of entree, and establishment of rapport; value conflicts; separation of participant and observer roles; and…

Reviews and assesses the contributions of current ethnographic studies and addresses the development of microethnographic research methods, the characteristics and findings of current microethnographic studies, and the overall state of the art of this field as it relates to education in multicultural settings. (Author/CM)

From the assumption that all social reality can be usefully viewed as the processes whereby people act and interact in everyday life, this paper argues that the macroanalysis characterizing most comparative education research must be replaced by systematic observation and analysis of the microcosmic world of everyday school life. (Author/SJL)

Reports on an ethnographic study of five primary school principals that was conducted to show what principals actually do and to illuminate the ways in which they and their work are seen by themselves, some members of their staff, and some of their pupils. (Author/IRT)

Explores how principals use some of the discretionary resources at their command to come to an accommodation with problems of resource inadequacy, challenges to authority, and conflicting role expectations. Uses the framework provided by the theory of street-level bureaucracy. (Author/IRT)

Considers the idiom of ethnic discrimination in one small and extremely "closed" Greek village, with the object of demonstrating the artificiality of the prejudice-xenophobia distinction in an ethnographic context. Uses a "folk taxonomy" model which examines the relativistic sense in which group stereotypes are applied.…

Explains the significance of masks in ethnographic and cultural research and suggests 24 activities intended for use by social studies classroom teachers as they teach about masks. Activities include projecting slides onto students' bodies and faces, directing students to create masks from old clothing and rags, cutting faces from magazines, and…