Interpretive Ethnography: Ethnographic Practices for the 21st Century

by Norman K. Denzin

As the world′s culture has become both postmodern and multinational, so too must ethnography. In this volume, Norman K Denzin examines the changes and sounds a call to transform ethnographic writing in a manner befitting a new age. The author ponders the prospects, problems, and forms of ethnographic interpretive writing in the twenty-first century. He argues cogently and persuasively that postmodern ethnography is the moral discourse of the contemporary world, and that ethnographers can and should explore new types of experimental texts, performance-based texts, literary journalism and narratives of the self to form a new ethics of inquiry.

352 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1996

Reviews

[Arda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Notes from thesis:

Denzin is cool. His notes on autoethnography and writing style are easy to understand.

Autoethnography allows the author to be present both as ethnographer and participant (Denzin, 1997). Autoethnography turns “the ethnographic gaze inward on the self (auto), while maintaining the outward gaze of ethnography,” therefore “looking at the larger context wherein self experiences occur” (Denzin, 1997, p. 227). It brings about the possibility to come up with different ways of understanding and meaning-making, ways that are neither linear nor reductive, but open to speak from particular insight (Denzin, 1997).

The self is performed through “critical interpretive inquiry” as a “systematic sociological introspection” (Denzin, 2013, p. 126).

This method of research provides the chance to visit lived moments, not only to tell the past differently, but to also experience the past differently (Denzin, 2013).