Representing Ethnography: Reading, Writing and Rhetoric in Qualitative Research [Multiple-component retail product]

The four volumes of this reference present 78 previously published articles or book excerpts on the subject of ethnographic representation, with each volume containing a different theme: contexts and controversies, reading qualitative research, analysis and voice in qualitative research, and writing and representation. The chapters of v.1 were first published in the 1970s and 80s and feature such influential thinkers as James Clifford, Clifford Geertz, and Paul Atkinson. The articles cover a gamut of issues in the field and reveal trends and ongoing controversies, engaging with such issues as postcolonialism, the use of personal experience, gender issues, autoethnography, and race. Issues of rhetoric are discussed in a lengthy introduction by the editors (both of them are in the department of sociology at Cardiff U., Wales), which situates their selection of writings in the larger theoretical context. Each article or excerpt concludes with notes and references; the set as a whole is not indexed. This will be a valuable work for the graduate seminar and as a reference for academics and professionals. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Qualitative research, especially ethnography, has seen a paradigm shift since 1968. This so-called Third Moment was concerned with the critical issue of the textual representation of ethnographic work. There was a call for a turn towards texts that mirrored the messiness of social life, that were faithful to the many voices of social worlds, in which the artfulness of ethnographic writing was manifest and in which the ethnographer was visibly present in the text. This major work, Ethnographic Discourse, brings together into one set all the important material on this rhetorical turn in qualitative research. Many of the critiques of the rhetorical turn are particularly hard to obtain and have never been gathered together in an accessible way. Volume I focuses on the contexts and controversies of this type of discourse. Volume II covers the reading of qualitative research in a range of disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology and history, and gives classic examples of the ways in which text can be read. Volume III examines the rhetorical turn in terms of analysis and voice. Volume IV showcases how ethnographic realities are represented to give readers a good coverage of all the possibilities.