Doing Ethnography

Giampietro Gobo is Professor of Methodology of Social Research and Sociology of Science at the University of Milan (Italy). He was one of the founders of the ‘Qualitative Methods’ Research Network of the European Sociological Association. His interests concern scientific controversies on health issues and workplace studies. He is currently undertaking projects on immunization and COVID-19 policies, and ethnographic experiments in the area of cooperation in small teamwork. His books include Doing Ethnography (Sage, 2008), Qualitative Research Practice (co-edited with C. Seale, J. F. Gubrium and D. Silverman, Sage, 2004) and Constructing Survey Data: An Interactional Approach (with S. Mauceri, Sage, 2014). Dr. Andrea Molle holds a PhD in Sociology from the Universita’ degli Studi di Milano. Between 2006 and 2008 he conducted extensive ethnographic research in Japan. Fellow of the “Japan Society for the Promotion of Science” and the “Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland,” his current research agenda focuses on cross-cultural studies of new religions, implicit religion practices and behaviour, the paranormal, religious violence, and martial arts and warfare studies. His methodological interests include the intersection between ethnography and computational tools for the study of social complexity. He has published a book on new religions (in Italian) and several articles in journals in the fields of Sociology, Anthropology, and Political Science.

In this elegant how-to book, the authors expand and deepen our understanding of ethnography and provide novices with a set of exercises and hands-on ways for getting the seat of their pants dirty in the social world. It explores emerging methodological approaches and challenges in ethnography, like studying people for whom life often happens more online than off it. Like a good cookbook, what it does best is simple: it makes you want to get into the kitchen.

• Part One: The MethodologyWhat is Ethnography?Method or Methodology? Locating Ethnography in the Methodological ContinuumEthnography: Approaches, Methods and PersonalitiesKey Ethnographic ApproachesResearch DesignEthnographic Sample DesignPart Two: Working the FieldEntering the FieldEthical DilemmasHow to ObserveWhat to Observe: Social Structures, Talk-in-Interactions and ContextsEthnographic InterviewEthnography as a CraftPart Three: Analyzing Ethnographic Data and Theory BuildingCoding and Analyzing Ethnographic DataPolitics of AccountabilityPart Four: AudiencesCommunicating Findings, Writing EthnographiesLeaving the FieldThe ‘Visual Society’: A Chance for Applied Ethnography