Ethnographic Explorations Surrender and Resistance

In Ethnographic Explorations: Surrender and Resistance, Whitaker and Atkinson, two experienced ethnographers, explore the complexities of fieldwork, analysis and writing from new perspectives. It takes the opportunity to reflect on Ethnography not just as a methodological perspective, but at a fundamental level. In general terms, Ethnography is seen not just in terms of a set of data-collection methods, but as a more profoundly transformational perspective. The book explores a series of tensions and differences in the conceptualisation and conduct of ethnography, among them: Surrender and Catch; Strangeness and Familiarity; Intimacy and Distance; amdRomanticism and Modernism. It emphasises disruptions and interruptions rather than an idealised model of smoothly untroubled research. The book covers a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives, illustrated with research in many social settings. The book is intended for researchers at postgraduate and postdoctoral levels and at experienced researchers who want to read a different, sometimes challenging, take on ethnographic research and its outcomes.

1. Commitments and the Field 2. Ethnography in Tension 3. Ethnography's Desire 4. Interrupted Lives and Ethnographic Moments 5. Ethnography Incarnate 6. Failed Modernism? Writing and the Grain of Everyday Life 7. The Catch and the Collector 8.Epilogue

Emilie Morwenna Whitaker is a Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Salford, UK,and an Honorary Lecturer at the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, UK. Her recent publications include Reflexivity in Social Research (Palgrave 2021) also with Paul Atkinson. Paul Atkinson is Distinguished Research Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Cardiff University, UK. His recent publications include the last two books in his Ethnography quartet Writing Ethnographically (2020) and Crafting Ethnography (2022), both for SAGE Publications; the fourth edition of Hammersley and Atkinson, Ethnography: Principles in Practice, was published by Routledge in 2021.