D. Soyini Madison - Critical Ethnography. Methods, Ethics, and Performance

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Acquisitions Editor: Lily Norton

Editorial Assistant: Sarah Wilson

Marketing Manager: Staci Wittek

Production Editor: Jyothi Sriram

Copy Editor: Beth Hammond

Typesetter: C&M Digitals (P) Ltd.

Proofreader: Laura Webb

Indexer: May Hasso

Cover Designer: Candice Harman

This book is an essential guide to theories and methods of critical ethnography where the primary interests are restorative justice, critical analysis, performance, and the ethical demands of fieldwork methods. My purpose for writing this book is twofold: first, to demonstrate the interdependent relationship between theory and method and how, together, they both become more meaningful, compelling, and useful as theory and method interact through fieldwork, and second, to demonstrate how the added dynamics of performance theories and methods serve to illuminate and generate the enlivening possibilities for a critical and ethical ethnography. Over these many years of both teaching and doing fieldwork, near and far, the greatest challenge has been to locate guiding examples that outline the nuts and bolts of key methodological challenges while simultaneously illustrating how theory can be productively applied in the field and in the report.

This book is geared toward upper level undergraduates and graduate students as well as social workers, artist practitioners, journalists, community organizers, and those who are experienced in fieldwork or qualitative methods. The book is fundamentally multidisciplinary, and I hope it will be useful to fieldworkers across the sciences and humanities. I also hope that students taking courses in ethnography, qualitative research methods, critical/cultural research methods, or advanced research methods will find it valuable.

The major features of the book include the following:

• Cutting-edge approach and perspective: It is the first book to explore and focus on the intersections between theory, fieldwork methods, performance, critical practice, and social justice.
• Global examples and material: Theories, methods, and examples are drawn from scholarship and experiences that extend beyond the West to include the global South and postcolonial thinkers and practitioners.
• Effective pedagogy: Examples of ethnographic projects and case studies are provided to illustrate more abstract or complex discussions and concepts.

The pedagogical features include Warm-Ups at the end of each chapter to give readers the opportunity to absorb the ideas in each chapter and to put them into action through practical exercises. Each chapter contains boxes of extended examples and explication to further explore and provide alternative views to key concepts. Readers will also follow the stories of three ethnographers and the challenges they confront during significant developmental stages in their fieldwork that serve to guide readers in how to integrate theoretical concepts with their interpretations and data analysis.