Reflexive Ethnography: A Guide to Researching Selves and Others

Ethnographic research is fundamental to the discipline of anthropology. However, contemporary debate on themes such as modernism/postmodernism, subjectivity/objectivity and self/other put the value of fieldwork into question. Reflexive Ethnography provides a practical and comprehensive guide to ethnographic research methods which fully engages with these significant issues. Reflexive Ethnography tackles all the relevant research questions, including chapters on selection of topics and methods, data collection, analysis, and ethics and politics. Charlotte Aull Davies stresses the positive contributions of reflexivity to methodology. Reflexive ethnography can generate a unique form of material that is neither accessible directly through native texts nor simply a reflection of the individual anthropologist's psyche. Instead ethnographic practice can fully incorporate reflexivity without abandoning its claims to develop valid knowledge of social reality.