Customer Reviews

Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)

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2 star:		(1)
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I utilized Van Maanen's short, but essential text on writing ethnography throughout my dissertation ethnography research (now a book: Native Americans in the Carolina Borderlands: A Critical Ethnography, Carolinas Press, 2000). Unlike most "how to" texts on Ethnography, Tales of the Field focuses on writing as methodology. Van Maanen's writing is clear and concise. The reader is given several writing styles in ethnography, with ample examples from the author's, and other's, ethnographic writings. A great little book for fieldworkers, novice and veteran, as well as undergraduate and graduate students in research methods courses.

Van Maanen's Tales is an excellent and succinct primer on the various ways we write ethnographic research. Giving a rich history of the 'armchair ethnographer' of the early 20th century, he procedds to show how our conceptualizations of this great practice has evolved.

This is a great book to determine not necessarily what kind of ethnography you want to write, but is a great exploration on how ethnography can write you. Are you a modern classisist ethnographer? Are you a interpretive ethnographer? Are you a critical ethnographer? Reading this book opened my eyes to the different techniques and questions we ethnographers can ask. Better yet, by delving into the various questions and ideas posed, I found where my ethnographic 'being' is.

I rate this with the highest rating possible.

How can someone trust an author who admits to cheating. Van Maanen writes, "In the academy, I helped cover for tardy classmates by concocting what I thought to be reasonable tales to tell superior officers. Several times I cheated on exams by passing my answer sheet around the back of the room (as I looked at others' answers sheets). These mostly mundane matters would hardly be worth mentioning were it not for the fact that they point to the difficulty, if not impossibility, of maintaining a clear cut and recognizable observational or participatory research role."

Having openly admitted to cheating in this instance, how could anything he writes be accepted as authentic? To me this is not a mundane matter, it goes to the heart of ethics. Van Maanen can write and tell a story, but how do we know his cheating isn't part of the plot.