Beyond Ethics and Pragmatism

Moshe Shokeid is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Tel Aviv University. His major publications include A Gay Synagogue in New York (Columbia University Press, 1995; University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003) and Can Academics Change the World? (Berghahn, 2020).

“Shokeid writes in detail about his efforts to maintain a neutral presence as a researcher while known publicly as a heterosexual, secular Jewish male from Israel and the challenges that arise when working with such diverse populations as members of a gay synagogue in New York City and Jewish immigrants in Israel. Throughout, the author thoughtfully guides readers through his takes on the theoretical, methodological, and ethical complexities of ethnographic research…Recommended.” • Choice“It is a work of excellence … a bold, honest, frank, personal account of an anthropologist doing ethnography in a multitude of settings and circumstances. Shokeid confronts the many complexities of fieldwork and qualitative social science research. It is an important work in the tradition of critical and public anthropology that should find a place in the curricula of every social science graduate program.” • Jeffrey David Ehrenreich, University of New Orleans

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: A Personal OverviewChapter 1. Exceptional Experiences in Everyday LifeChapter 2. On Academics Engagement in National Political ConflictsChapter 3. Revisiting Old Fieldnotes: What Have We Left Out?Chapter 4. The Book Cover and the Ethnographic TextChapter 5. Listening to Jewish Missionaries’ MessagesChapter 6. The Lifespan of Ethnographic ReportsChapter 7. Exceptional Experiences in Academic LifeChapter 8. The Destiny of Urban PeripheriesChapter 9. An Anthropologist’s Engagement as Insider and OutsiderChapter 10. Remembering the Dead: Writing, the Vehicle of Spectral SurvivalAfterwordIndex