Organizational Ethnography

Dvora Yanow is a political ethnographer and interpretive methodologist. Her research explores state-created categories for immigrant and race-ethnic identities, workplace practices and organizational learning, and built spaces and meaning.

This timely collection constitutes essential reading for all organizational ethnographers interested in the ways in which their discipline is developing. Although it will primarily be used for reference on the basis of individual chapters, this is a well crafted text which maintains a strong narrative throughout Organization Journal Whether one′s background is in ethnography or organizations research, this volume is an excellent place to begin. With modest aims, it offers advice, guides, stories, and cautionary tales to which both students and experienced professionals can relate. Experienced researchers may find this book to be a useful teaching tool and occasional reference work. Highly recommended at all levels and to librariesCHOICE Magazine The volume offers a fine introduction to interdisciplinary research...the book is of tremendous value precisely because of its reformulation of classic and perennial issues and problems of ethnography in a new setting...This is more than enough reason to assign the book for both undergraduate and graduate coursesOpen Anthropology Cooperative The relationship between ethnography and the study of organizational settings is not an intuitive one, in that organizational ethnography is ‘a relatively new term’...The collection of essays contained in the book is successful in explaining what links the two, and why an ethnographic perspective on organizations, by engaging with the everyday experiences of people, may be a fruitful starting point for understanding work...Competent, informed and detailedWork, Employment and Society The editors have compiled a thought-provoking look at this method of research...The writing is vivid, engagingand humorous in places, using organizational ethnography itself as a means to illuminate the subject...Organizational Ethnography is an enjoyable read and an effective resource. It is helpful for researchers, students and practitioners in analyzing the culture of organizationsJournal of Occupational Science

• Studying Everyday Organizational Life - Sierk Ybema, Dvora Yanow, Harry Wels and Frans KamsteegPART ONE: ETHNOGRAPHIC DOING AND WRITINGGetting Going: Organizing Ethnographic Fieldwork - Kees van der WaalEthnographic Practices: From ′Writing-up Ethnographic Research′ to ′Writing Ethnography′ - Michael Humphreys and Tony WatsonReading and Writing as Method: In Search of Trustworthy Texts - Peregrine Schwartz-Shea and Dvora YanowWhen the ′Subject′ and the ′Researcher′ Speak Together: Co-producing Organizational Ethnography - Simon Down and Michael HughesPART TWO: FAMILIARITY AND ′STRANGER-NESS′ Making the Familiar Strange: A Case for Disengaged Organizational Ethnography - Sierk Ybema and Frans Kamsteeg Zooming In & Zooming Out: A Package of Method and Theory to Study Work Practices - Davide NicoliniFrom Participant Observation to Observant Participation - Brian MoeranAt-home Ethnography: Struggling with Closeness and Closure - Mats AlvessonPART THREE: RESEARCHER-RESEARCHED RELATIONSHIPSLies from the Field: Ethical Issues in Organizational Ethnography - Gary Alan Fine and David Shulman′But I Thought We Were Friends?′ Life Cycles and Research Relationships - Nic Beech, Paul Hibbert, Robert MacIntosh and Peter McInnesCritical Action Research and Organizational Ethnography - Chris Sykes and Lesley TreleavenBeyond Complicity: A Plea for Engaged Ethnography - Halleh Ghorashi and Harry WelsAnnotated BibliographyDefining ′Organizational Ethnography′: Selection Criteria - Dvora Yanow and Karin GeuijenBibliography - Karin Geuijen