Doing Ethnography
Jessica Smartt Gullion and Susan Harper
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Hardcover
pre-orderDecember 5, 2025
ISBN 9781462559213
Price: $68.00 189 Pages
Size: 6" x 9"
Paperback
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ISBN 9781462546923
Price: $45.00189 Pages
Size: 6" x 9"
e-book
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PDF and Accessible ePub ?
Price: $45.00 189 Pages
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Price: 189 Pages
ePub is Global Certified Accessible
Digital professor copy available on VitalSource once published ?Written by a sociologist and an anthropologist, this concise primer is packed with clear methodological guidance and engaging stories that illustrate what ethnography looks like in practice. The text follows the arc of a typical ethnographic study, with ethics and social justice concerns highlighted throughout. Jessica Smartt Gullion and Susan Harper address practical considerations in developing a research question, planning and conducting fieldwork, and dealing with common pitfalls. They show how to organize and analyze data, using techniques from grounded analysis to poetic inquiry. The book addresses the politics of fieldwork, discomfort and safety issues, and who has the right to tell others’ stories, and offers advice on writing up and publishing ethnographic work for different audiences. Chapters include opening vignettes, boxes on key techniques, discussion questions, exercises, and prompts for contemplative learning.
This title is part of the Qualitative Methods "How-To" Guides series, edited by Patricia Leavy.
“Doing Ethnography is as clearly written and engaging as the title suggests. Gullion and Harper draw on their own experiences, coupled with classic and contemporary ethnographic works, to explicate the complicated nature and process of engaging in ethnographic research. They encourage readers to contemplate and practice core concepts and activities important to doing ethnographic inquiry. As passionate ethnographers themselves, these authors don’t merely write about ethnography, they take novices and experienced ethnographers into new ways of crafting their research with people, cultures, and communities.”
—Barbara Dennis, PhD, Professor of Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methodology, Indiana University
About the Authors
Jessica Smartt Gullion, PhD, is Professor of Sociology at Texas Woman’s University. She has published several books and more than 35 book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Qualitative Inquiry, the International Review of Qualitative Research, and the Journal of Autoethnography.Susan Harper, PhD, is Director of Co-Curricular Student Development at Iowa State University. She is an educator, activist, advocate, and scholar whose interests include feminist pedagogy, qualitative inquiry as a tool for social justice, ethnography, and contemporary Paganism.