Available From UC Press

While some books present “ideal” ethnographic field methods, Inside Ethnography shares the realities of fieldwork in action. With a focus on strategies employed with populations at society’s margins, twenty-one contemporary ethnographers examine their cutting-edge work with honesty and introspection, drawing readers into the field to reveal the challenges they have faced.
 
Representing disciplinary approaches from criminology, sociology, anthropology, public health, business, and social work, and designed explicitly for courses on ethnographic and qualitative methods, crime, deviance, drugs, and urban sociology, the authors portray an evolving methodology that adapts to the conditions of the field while tackling emerging controversies with perceptive sensitivity. Their judicious advice on how to avoid pitfalls and remedy missteps provides unusual insights for practitioners, academics, and undergraduate and graduate students.
 

Miriam Boeri is Associate Professor of Sociology at Bentley University. She is the author of Hurt: Chronicles of the Drug War Generation and Women on Ice: Methamphetamine Use among Suburban Women.

Rashi K. Shukla is Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Central Oklahoma. She is the author of Methamphetamine: A Love Story.    

“Wonderfully candid, these fieldwork disclosures are told by both novice and veteran scholars from divergent disciplines. The collection represents a broad and instructive range of typically untold background stories that emerge from demanding research endeavors in settings filled with risk and uncertainty. Further testimony to the remarkable heterogeneity of ethnography.”—John Van Maanen, author of Tales of the Field

"An excellent illustration of diverse contemporary applications of ethnography, with rich, insightful, and evocative stories from the field."—Karen O'Reilly, author of Ethnographic Methods