Thinking Ethnographically

This brilliant new book by Paul Atkinson offers scholars and students alike foundational insights on how to conduct ethnography based on granular analysis, that is work that traces the grain of everyday life. This book has a  commanding grasp of the many traditions that define contemporary ethnographic inquiry.  It  will define ethnographic inquiry for the next decade. For this we are in Atkinson's  debt.

A masterclass by a master ethnographer on how to make sense of qualitative data.

A vital contribution. And all the more timely, given the continuing explosion of qualitative and ethnographic research.

Paul Atkinson is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Cardiff University. Recent publications include For Ethnography (SAGE 2014) and Thinking Ethnographically (SAGE 2017). The fourth book in his quartet will be Crafting Ethnography, also for SAGE. The fourth edition of Hammersley and Atkinson Ethnography: Principles in Practice was published by Routledge in 2019. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and of the Learned Society of Wales.

Introduction Defining Social Reality Social worlds Social construction of reality Definition of the situation Documentary realities Boundaries Encounters Encounters Negotiations Conversations Awareness contexts Language and Performance Performances Accounts Narratives Rhetoric Rumour and gossip Identities Identities Labelling Moral careers Motives Communities of practice Knowledge and Reason Practical reasoning Practicalities of rule use Typifications Habitus Knowledge Senses and Things Sensory multimodality Aesthetics Artefacts Soundscapes Landscapes Time and Memory Collective memory Timecapes Authenticity Age and generation