Lyn H. Lofland – författare

The fortieth-anniversary edition of a classic and prescient work on death and dying.

Much of today''s literature on end-of-life issues overlooks the importance of 1970s social movements in shaping our understanding of death, dying, and the dead body. This anniversary edition of Lyn Lofland''s The Craft of Dying begins to repair this omission. Lofland identifies, critiques, and theorizes 1970s death movements, including the Death Acceptance Movement, the Death with Dignity Movement, and the Natural Death movement. All these groups attempted to transform death into a “positive experience,” anticipating much of today''s death and dying activism.

Lofland turns a sociologist''s eye on the era''s increased interest in death, considering, among other things, the components of the modern “face of death” and the “craft of dying,” the construction of a dying role or identity by those who are dying, and the constraints on their freedom to do this. Lofland wrote just before the AIDS epidemic transformed the landscape of death and dying in the West; many of the trends she identified became the building blocks of AIDS activism in the 1980s and 1990s. The Craft of Dying will help readers understand contemporary death social movements'' historical relationships to questions of race, class, gender, and sexuality and is a book that everyone interested in end-of-life politics should read.

`This wonderful Handbook establishes the central, and complex place ethnography now occupies in the human disciplines. All future work will begin here' - Norman K Denzin, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

`A marvellous achievement! The Handbook has all the marks of a winner - compelling writing, comprehensive coverage and very useful discussions. This is a real benchmark for ethnography. It will set the background for debate and point to new directions for years to come. My graduate students will love it' - Jaber F Gubrium, University of Florida, Gainesville

`The Handbook of Ethnography compiles invaluable, original, critical essays on ethnographic work, earning it a place on everyone's must-have bookshelf' - Virginia Olesen, University of California, San Francisco

`The Handbook is a remarkable synthesis of existing thinking in and around ethnography' - Forum for Qualitative Social Research - follow the link below to read the complete review

`No self-respecting qualitative researcher should be without Paul Atkinson (et al's) handbook on ethnography. This really is encyclopaedic in concept and scope. Many "big names" in the field have contributed so this has to be the starting point for anyone looking to understand the field in substantive topic, theoretical tradition and methodology. The chapters on visual ethnography and semiotics expand the field marvellously, while those on field notes and on ethics are accomplished surveys of the field' - SRA News

Ethnography is one of the chief research methods in sociology, anthropology and other cognate disciplines in the social sciences. This Handbook provides an unparalleled, critical guide to its principles and practice.

The volume is organized into three sections. The first systematically locates ethnography firmly in its relevant historical and intellectual contexts. The roots of ethnography are pinpointed and the pattern of its development is demonstrated.

The second section examines the contribution of ethnography to major fields of substantive research. The impact and strengths and weaknesses of ethnographic method are dealt with authoritatively and accessibly.

The third section moves on to examine key debates and issues in ethnography, from the conduct of research through to contemporary arguments.

The result is a landmark work in the field, which draws on the expertise of an internationally renowned group of interdisicplinary scholars. The Handbook of Ethnography provides readers with a one-stop critical guide to the past, present and future of ethnography. It will quickly establish itself as the ethnographer's bible.

This book is about the "public realm," defined as a particular kind of social territory that is found almost exclusively in large settlements. This particular form of social-psychological space comes into being whenever a piece of actual physical space is dominated by relationships between and among persons who are strangers to one another, as often occurs in urban bars, buses, plazas, parks, coffee houses, streets, and so forth. More specifically, the book is about the social life that occurs in such social-psychological spaces (the normative patterns and principles that shape it, the relationships that characterize it, the aesthetic and interactional pleasures that enliven it) and the forces (anti-urbanism, privatism, post-war planning and architecture) that threaten it. The data upon which the book''s analysis is based are diverse: direct observation; interviews; contemporary photographs, historic etchings, prints and photographs, and historical maps; histories of specific urban public spaces or spatial types; and the relevant scholarly literature from sociology, environmental psychology, geography, history, anthropology, and architecture and urban planning and design. Its central argument is that while the existing body of accomplished work in the social sciences can be reinterpreted to make it relevant to an understanding of the public realm, this quintessential feature of city life deserves much more u it deserves to be the object of direct scholarly interest in its own right. Choice noted that: "The author''s writing style is unusually accessible, and the often fascinating narrative is generously supported by well-chosen photos."

This book is about the "public realm," defined as a particular kind of social territory that is found almost exclusively in large settlements. This particular form of social-psychological space comes into being whenever a piece of actual physical space is dominated by relationships between and among persons who are strangers to one another, as often occurs in urban bars, buses, plazas, parks, coffee houses, streets, and so forth. More specifically, the book is about the social life that occurs in such social-psychological spaces (the normative patterns and principles that shape it, the relationships that characterize it, the aesthetic and interactional pleasures that enliven it) and the forces (anti-urbanism, privatism, post-war planning and architecture) that threaten it. The data upon which the book''s analysis is based are diverse: direct observation; interviews; contemporary photographs, historic etchings, prints and photographs, and historical maps; histories of specific urban public spaces or spatial types; and the relevant scholarly literature from sociology, environmental psychology, geography, history, anthropology, and architecture and urban planning and design. Its central argument is that while the existing body of accomplished work in the social sciences can be reinterpreted to make it relevant to an understanding of the public realm, this quintessential feature of city life deserves much more u it deserves to be the object of direct scholarly interest in its own right. Choice noted that: "The author''s writing style is unusually accessible, and the often fascinating narrative is generously supported by well-chosen photos."