Interpretive Ethnography: Ethnographic Practices for the 21st Century

Norman K. Denzin

Dec 1996 · SAGE Publications

About this eBook

At we enter the 21st century, we are witnessing tremendous changes in the world′s culture. As it has become both postmodern and multinational, so too must ethnography. In Interpretive Ethnography, Norman K. Denzin examines these changes and sounds a call to transform ethnographic writing in a manner befitting a new age. Denzin ponders the prospects, problems, and forms of ethnographic, interpretive writing as we hurtle toward the 21st century. In this breakthrough volume, he argues cogently and persuasively that postmodern ethnography is the moral discourse of the contemporary world and that ethnographers can and should explore new sorts of experiential texts--such as performance-based text, literary journalism, and narratives of the self--to form a new ethics of inquiry.

This outstanding volume by one of the premier qualitative researchers will be essential for professionals and students in qualitative methods, sociology, anthropology, communication, cultural studies, social theory, education, management, and nursing.

About the author

Norman K. Denzin was Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Communications, College of Communications Scholar, and Research Professor of Communications, Sociology, and Humanities at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. One of the world’s foremost authorities on qualitative research and cultural criticism, he was the author or editor of more than 30 books, including The Qualitative Manifesto; Qualitative Inquiry Under Fire; Reading Race; Interpretive Ethnography; The Cinematic Society; The Alcoholic Self; and a trilogy on the American West. He was past editor of The Sociological Quarterly, co-editor of six editions of the landmark SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, co-editor (with Michael D. Giardina) of 18 books on qualitative inquiry, co-editor (with Yvonna S. Lincoln and Michael D. Giardina) of the methods journal Qualitative Inquiry, founding editor of Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies and International Review of Qualitative Research, editor of four book series, and founding director of the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry.