Ethnographic Practice in the Present: (11 EASA Series)

In its assessment of the current "state of play" of ethnographic practice in social anthropology, this volume explores the challenges that changing social forms and changing understandings of "the field" pose to contemporary ethnographic methods. These challenges include the implications of the remarkable impact social anthropology is having on neighboring disciplines such as history, sociology, cultural studies, human geography and linguistics, as well as the potential ‘costs’ of this success for the discipline. Contributors also discuss how the ethnographic method is influenced by current institutional contexts and historical "traditions" across a range of settings. Here ethnography is featured less as a methodological "tool-box" or technique but rather as a subject on which to reflect.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Jon P. Mitchell Chapter 1. Ethnography and Memory Johannes Fabian Chapter 2. Fieldwork as Free Association and Free Passage Judith Okely Chapter 3. Bringing ethnography home? Costs and benefits of methodological traffic across disciplines Thomas Widlok Chapter 4. Ethnography at the interface: ‘corporate social responsibility’ as an anthropological field of inquiry Christina Garsten Chapter 5. Notes From Within a Laboratory for the Reinvention of Anthropological Method George E. Marcus Chapter 6. Making Ethics Sharon Macdonald Chapter 7. Ethnographic Practices and Methods: Some Predicaments of Russian Anthropology Alexei Elfimov Chapter 8. Getting the ethnography ‘right’: On female circumcision in exile Aud Talle Chapter 9. An Ethnography of Associations? Translocal research in the Cross River region Ute Röschenthaler Chapter 10. Tracking global flows and still moving: the ethnography of responses to AIDS Cristiana Bastos Chapter 11. Ethnography in motion: shifting fields on airport grounds Dimitra Gefou-Madianou Epilogue I: Re-Presenting Anthropology Simon Coleman Epilogue II: Prelude to a Re-functioned Ethnography Douglas R. Holmes and George E. Marcus Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Marit Melhuus is Professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo. Her earlier work has been on issues of gender, morality and change in Latin America, and her publications include Machos, Mistresses, Madonnas. Contesting the Power of Latin American Gender Imagery (co-edited with Kristi Anne Stølen, Verso, 1996). Her current research concerns biotechnology, kinship, and law, and she has published numerous articles on these questions. Recent publications include Holding Worlds Together. Ethnographies of Truth and Belonging (co-edited with Marianne Lien, Berghahn, 2007) and La Norvège, vues de l’intérieur, a special issue of Ethnologie francaise (jointly edited with Sophie Chevalier and Marianne Lien, 2009).