Composing Ethnography
Alternative Forms of Qualitative Writing
Edited by Carolyn Ellis, Arthur P. Bochner University of South Flori
Publication date:
13 August 1996Length of book:
400 pagesPublisher
AltaMira PressDimensions:
238x157mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9780761991632
What is it like to have lived with bulimia for most of your life? To have a mother who is retarded? To fight a health insurance company in order to survive breast cancer? Carolyn Ellis and Arthur P. Bochner have assembled innovative pieces which tackle these and other difficult questions, enlarging the space to practice ethnographic writing as the stories are told through memoirs, poetry, photography, and other creative forms usually associated with the arts. The authors demonstrate how ethnographic data can be converted into memorable experiences that readers can use in the classroom and everyday life.
Ellis and Bochner establish the need, importance and centrality of new forms of qualitative writing for interpretive ethnography . . . [establishing] autoethnographies, sociopoetics, and reflexive texts as central points of reference for innovative ethnographic practice in the next century. There is much to be learned from these important exemplars.