Ethnographic Books

As a student coming from a merely conservative culture, I can relate with the Bradburds' expriences. I find the Komachies and the Malays(dominant ethnicity of Malaysia) having similar culture and tradition because of the religion; Islam. The wedding trays are very alike and men are considered to have more power than women. However, my mom wears the pants in my family ;-). I came directly from Malaysia to upstate Potsdam NY. It 's such a culture shock and quite an interesting experience. I understand the feeling of being FAR away from home....and let me tell you, it ain't easy!

As the author's daughter this is a biased review, but I do like the book and think it would be helpful to anyone starting fieldwork and interesting to anyone else.

As a friend, fellow ethnographer, and reviewer of other writings by Bradburd, I am very pleased to see this book in paperback (i.e., classroom usable) form and happily recommend it to others. It is highly readable, personally engaging, and very informative about people, settings, and ways of life that are not generally accessible to cultural outsiders -- even other Iranians. That Bradburd is able to help a reader gain an appreciation and understanding of the complexities of Komachi life is a credit to his skill as a writer -- both most of all as a researcher. Well done!

Is it possible to learn anything about another culture without skewing the data just by being there? Dan Bradburd argues that it is, and shows how. For general readers interested in finding out what field work is like, the book provides a diverting account. For anthropologists who think there's no point in going, a convincing argument to the contrary.

A seminal reference for all those qualitative researchers--graudate students and tenure track--who use the interview as a data gathering tool. I have referenced this book several times throughout my journey of obtaining my PhD. A must-have reference!

Diane Billay RN BN MN PhD(c)

While reviewing tons of literature searching for the appropriate research methodology for my doctorate degree in corporate innovation, "The Ethnographic Interview" came to my attention. The research paradigm described and illustrated in this work provided a blueprint for the collection and analysis of text-based data. So often quantitative measures are applied before the problem or situation has been truly assessed. Spradley's methods are respectful of the population or culture to be studied and provide a vehicle for the researcher to interact without interferring.

This is a great step-by-step guide to the theory and practice of ethnography. Provides the theoretical rationale for why ethnography is structured as it is. It is most unique for the well thought out, structured approach to interviewing. Identifies how different types of questions provide different types of data. Gives an elegant taxonomy of questions and shows how each type of question is linked to a different aspect of ethnographic analysis. A must read classic for anyone--academic ethnographics to market researchers--involved with data collection from individual human beings.

Spradley was an advocate and artful practitioner of a particular type of ethnography, informed by symbolic interactionism, that does not necessarily have the spatial contextual character of most ethnography. For example, he studied "tramp" culture, which is a context of a sort, but not like, say the KU med school in Boys in White. Much of this book explains how to conduct his sort of research. Because I generally favor the more traditional contextual approach, I neglected this book in my own book The Ethnographer's Method (Sage). Now I wish I hadn't; the advice on ethnographic interviewing is still very worthwhile for anyone heading off into field research, regardless of their style of "qualitative" study. In fact, I'm using it myself in the project I'm currently launching.

I took several of Dr. Heider's classes while attending the University of South Carolina. I still look back on his courses as the highlight of my academic career. I remember some of the films from my university days and have been searching for them since. The book is structured well, explores a variety of topics, and expertly weaves a discussion of the films included into the chapters of the book. I have long since graduated but enjoy reading this book and watching the films just to get re-engaged with cultural anthropology.

The book arrived promptly in brand new condition as ordered. The Amazon site said it qualified for free shipping, but I was charged for shipping.

Book came quickly and is in perfect shape. Well packaged and a pleasure to business with.
Thank you.

This is an excellent text. Any professor searching for a Cultural Anthropology text needn't look any further. Heider presents the material in a very interesting, concise, and very clear way. Heider clearly illustrates the holistic approach to anthropology and explores that avenue in an exciting way.

With a rich and captivating narrative style, Endangered Species skillfully establishes how the noble intentions of conservation and preservation could lead to such catastrophic results. Harper has produced a powerful and troubling book that complicates our understanding of the generally unexamined dire consequences for traditional peoples that can be the resulting byproducts of biodiversity conservation programs.

Endangered Species fits well in the finest activist ethnographic tradition alongside such works as Nancy Scheper-Hughes' Death Without Weeping, and Paul Farmer's The Uses of Haiti. Janice Harper's rich analysis enlarges our understanding of the impacts of international conservation programs, as well as our understanding of links between the environment, health and culture.

This is an excellent book that looks beyond the surface of game preserves and examines the impact of species protective programs on human populations. The author uncovers tragic consiquences of short sighted policies, and governmental agencies and NGOs who refused to deal with the consiquences of their policies. A must read for any anthropology or public policy grad student.

Dr. Janice Harper's book is scorching in its honesty, painful in its portraits, relishable in its irreverence.

How thankful I am as a reader that Harper's editors did not slash and burn her political writing which in my view is the crux of the book. The betrayal of the village, Ranotsara, in southeastern Madagascar, where Harper lived for fifteen months, by the Ranomafana National Park Project, the United States Agency for International Development, and other organizations of "good will" is astonishing. Her writing of the events is brilliant in large part because she stops just before nailing to the wall the puppets in those organizations. She leaves them twisting in the wind, unwilling, unable, or both, to make a case for themselves, no matter how obvious their desperation and denial.

The deaths in Ranotsara Dr. Harper witnessed, grieved, and tried hard to sing about bring to the fore the absolute decay of honor in these days of diminishing returns for the written word and honorable deeds hijacked by hapless do-gooders, doing more harm than good. The moment in the book when Harper's father dies is one of the most honest accounts of the multiple shocks she was electrified by in Ranotsara, as the "Tanala" (people of the forest) grieved their ever increasing dead.

Make no mistake, this book is not about Dr. Harper. It is about a village and a people she grew to love. It is about her culture shock in doing the work she obviously loves and the Tanala who are simply trying to preserve their culture and stay alive. There should be an English word stronger, brighter, and more endearing than 'endangered'. The people of the forest deserve it.

(**Please note** My name is David Harrington Campbell, the author of the recently published novel, DANCING ON THE CELLAR DOOR, currently available on Amazon.)

I recommend this book enthusiastically, for several reasons: First, amid the helter skelter of my own life, I treasure books I can enjoy in segments. Second, I enjoy books which I consider well written, and third, I relish non fiction books that read like imaginative prose but are actually non fiction works. TRAVELS WITH ERNEST meets each of these criteria. Savoring, dipping into this book, is a joy. TRAVELS WITH ERNEST enabled me, a compulsive stay-at-home, to see distant places. For example, as I write it's deep winter in Ohio, 2006, and I'm writing about Laurel and Ernest's ninth soujourn at St. Petersburg Beach, Florida in March 2002. Laurel, an accomplished poet, writes first, revealing her sharp yet lyrical talent for descriptive prose. It's her first trip since 9/11 and she breathes deeply "imagining millions of zaps of the happiness potions that live in the sea, some call them 'negative ions.'" She describes the GulfGate Condos as "color coordinated, swirls of turquoise, shrimp, and shells on the Wall Tex, chair covers, upholstery, pictures, dishes, towels, sheets. I sink into the comfort of the cliche." We're allowed to relish a visit to Evander Preston's jewelry store where Ernest buys Laurel "a pair of gold earrings, flat and smooth with wrinkled edges like the sea." In Ernest's account they revisit the Don Cesar Hotel which used to be a haunt of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Coincicentally, they want to see President George W. Bush and his motorcade drive up to the Don Cesar for a $25,000 a plate fundraiser. As two retired profesors they exchange hilarious wisecracks about the price! They also intend to have lunch in an ice cream parlor which was once named Zelda's, but they have to settle for the new Uncle Andy's. Ernest, who is an aficianado of--indeed, an expert on--F.Scott Fitzgerald's THE GREAT GATSBY, describes the scene with accuracy and literary elan. As Laurel puts it, "Ernest can riff." He describes the Don Cesar as "our goal the flamingo pink mirage shimmering up ahead in the Florida heat, gigantic yet fragile looking, a Hansel and Gretel castle that might at any moment dissolve like sherbet into the Gulf of Mexico." Laurel asks Ernest whether he remembers George W. Bush at Yale. This sets Ernest off on a riotous yet highly informative ramble on those Yale days, 1963-71, when Ernest was assistant professor of English there. He recalls "classrooms full of good looking kids who'd rather discuss yachts than Yeats, most of them looking like, oh, clones of the Kingston Trio." Ernest writes skillfully, fearlessly about the then-new New Criticism and explains how and why N.C. eventually contaminated--yes, nearly murdered--the craft of literature, yea, education. Here is a marvelous expose, a must, for a throng of serious writers who have been suffering in silence and wondering for some time what really went wrong. In TRAVELS WITH ERNEST the authors break down societal barriers of alienation by sharing their conversations, thoughts, experiences. It's the actual story of two people who love each other and share their work and their lives. I treasure this book. It's kind of like reality TV, but the ideas are more exciting, and the language is platinum. REVIEWER: Elizabeth Ann James

TRAVELS WITH ERNEST could be called Travels with Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, William Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, and William Butler Yeats, for its unique travel narratives are informed by a wide range of literary works. At one point Ernest Lockridge muses on his tendency to follow the footsteps of famous authors: "Myth and literature help order and direct your life, so you're not just traveling fecklessly about. They're like a map. We're able to map ourselves onto literature and onto myth." Lockridge and his wife, Laurel Richardson, travel with and without maps in TRAVELS WITH ERNEST, a hybrid volume combining travel narratives from two distinct perspectives. Lockridge and Richardson are both authors and emeritus professors at Ohio State University, Lockridge in English and creative writing and Richardson in sociology and cultural studies. For this book, they traveled to places as different as Death Valley, Beirut, and Ireland, each writing about the trip from his or her individual perspective; the book also includes transcripts of their conversations about the trips and the writing process. Ernest's essays, Laurel's essays, and the couple's conversations work together to triangulate in on exotic places and the process by which people come to know the world. Richardson describes their method: "Experiencing, writing, conversing, rewriting, conversing, writing. Although we agree on what we see, we have a different edge, a different take on experience." Most interesting are those forays that take the writers off the map entirely. Over and over again the map has been lost or left behind, but our intrepid explorers stumble on stubbornly, ending up lost or imperiled. Even while exploring familiar terrain, they discover hidden hazards. Lockridge, for instance, is haunted by memories of his father, novelist Ross Lockridge, who wrote RAINTREE COUNTY, a classic of mid-century Midwestern literature, and then committed suicide at the peak of his success. The terrain they travel is both exotic and familiar: a high-rise apartment building in Russia where they encounter cherished family members; a tiny apartment in Copenhagen that evokes memories of their student days; an ancient castle in Ireland that bears a family name. Wherever they travel--Beirut, Copenhagen, Shenandoah--they find their people, their history, themselves. And they also find Ohio. Lockridge describes Ireland's Midlands as "a dead ringer for Ohio on our best day of the year." Even while looking over Yeats's acclaimed Lake Isle of Innisfree, Lockridge finds an island paradise that looks familiar: "Thick with trees and shrubs it's the size of my back yard in Worthington, Ohio." Whatever maps its authors may follow, TRAVELS WITH ERNEST leads right back home.

I loved this book! Lockridge's humor pulled me in and Richardson's lyrical writing kept me reading. This is a book that cuts a broad swath through an academic couple's life. It took me to places I had never seen, made me think about my marriage in new ways and examine my career history with fresh eyes. Travels with Ernest is unique, compelling, and provocative. I highly recommend it.

This is an encyclopedic view of cultures past and present. A must buy for any reference section of a library and for any serious librarian

This is an amazing piece of work. The author presents the location of over 5,000 cultural groups around the globe, and includes and exstensive bibliography linking these peoples with ethnographic literature. The book is vital for any anthropologist or scholar of the developing world. This has become a standard reference work for cross-cultural research projects and even the human genome project.

From front inside cover:
[copyright 1978]

"This volume is the first empirical investigation in more than a decade which involves a number of black-white legally married couples. Through in-depth interviews Ernest Porterfield explores the couples' intrafamilial relations, interfamilial patterns, and relations between these unions and the larger society.

Rather than providing us with statistical data alone, the author invites us to share the experience that these couples have both as couples and as individuals in the large world. The problems encountered in such normal activities such as getting and keeping a job, getting and keeping adequate housing and raising a family, very often become compounded by the hostilities they face from the world at large.

To put..observations into perspective, Dr. Porterfield supplies some interesting historical background, beginning with the colonial period, on the relations between the sexes and between the races. Without this information, which is only now finding its way into the mainstream of historical analysis, it is very difficult to fully understand black-white relationships as they are today. In fact, it is very difficult to get a good grasp on our history as a whole, pre- as well as post-Civil War, without exploring these skeletons in our national closet.

Dr. Porterfield also examines other pertinent issues, such as the reasons for marrying and dating interracially, the predominant sex of each race involved in these marriages, and dating patterns and the achievement of egalitarianism through black nationalism.

The issue of black nationalism is quite complex. While on the one hand, its development should bring greater social, economic, and political equality to blacks, there appears to be a correlation between intermarriage and the enhancement of minority social status. Furthermore, it seems to be important for a black to intermarry in order to share in the wealth that the dominant group has to offer. In essence, the old axiom about having money to get money still applies, at least in some measure. To bring further light to the subject, the author compares the American situation to the one we find in Latin American countries such as Mexico and Brazil.

The findings of this study, to some degree, should reveal the extent to which attitudes on the part of whites are changing toward the overall status of blacks. This investigation should also generate greater understanding of the possibilities, as well as the difficulties, of developing an egalitarian multiracial society through large scale intermarriage."

Black-white marriage in the United States have long been a subject little talked about and, for various reasons, one of limited sociological inquiry....In spite of the growing amount of interest in this marital combination, knowledge of its nature, extent, and changing character is quite inadequate. Information from marriage and divorce records is fragmentary and innaccuarte for various reasons....This study presents a systematic ethnographic description of forty black-white families. It focuses atention on intrafamilial relations, interactional patterns between families and their kin network, and relations between these unions and larger society. A secondary aim is to generate greater understanding of the possibilities of, as well as the difficulties in developing an egalitarian multiracial society (such as the Unitied States) through large-scale miscegenation.
--- excerpts from book's preface

Alexander and Sonia Alland have produced a rigorous yet fascinating ethnographic study which will prove of enormous interest to those scholars of anthropology while remaining accessible to the layman. Theirs is fieldwork at its best.
I admire the historic knowledge of the Catalan idiosyncrasy throughout two focus points. Two centers in two countries; Port-Bou, in Catalunya, an autonomous region in Spain, and Cerbère in France.
When we read maps, we see the geographic boundaries but we rarely see maps that indicate the boundaries of language, surely, a more accurate guide to the cultures of the world than politically negotiated frontiers. Catalan, the language, straddles the line of the Pyrenées like a shadow on the landscape of the Principality it once was.
The book portrays the Catalan language heritage, the political prosecutions it has suffered and the different ways of dealing with them Catalan people on both sides of the border have demonstrated. It also reveals the, not very promising, current reality of the language.
Into the living fabric of a language is woven the cultural personality of a nation and it is upon this entity that Alex Alland has directed his attention with dedicated scholarship. Indifference, neglect and persecution have each in their turn taken their toll, but this excellent study shows the pulse of this ancient language yet beats with life.

An absorbing book I cannot recommend too highly.

This book guides us through one of the world's most fascinating regions -- Catalunya, a nation without a state located between France and Spain. The author, Alexander Alland, is an anthropologist who has written extensively about visits to other strange lands and friendly people. Here he provides an excellent background of Catalunya's history and culture, then focuses on two villages, Portbou and Cerbére, where he interviews locals and learns of their struggles to maintain their language and culture in the face of constant change.

These is a ground-breaking book, the most influential authors, professors, intellectuals, and personalities in the area of Cultural Studies. Chicanas, Chicanos, Whites, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Mexicans, and Latino-Americans answer questions from the most essential to the most intimate in this Virtual Forum created by one of my favorite authors and Professor -- Dr. Angie Chabram-Dernersesian. It's a first and like no other, This book has been has been well received in Europe and the United States,
I enjoyed reading this lively book. Recommended. It's a must Buy!!!

Available worldwide, for sale in North America, Great Britain and the Commonwealth, including Australia and New Zealand. the European Union, Latin-America, and most recently in Japan.

This is a great book and its format will really be pleasing for many. It's a series of conversations between all the big/key names in Chicana/o studies. It reads like you're part of this great cafe klatch. I didn't have a favourite section--it was all good. This book is great for more of a history or historiography of Chicana/o cultural studies as both a political and academic endeavor.

I also felt a sense of academic kinship reading so many authors who I'm familiar with and even a handful who I have met before on campuses, worked for, or know via political science/women's studies organizations.

This book will be appreicated by those interested in Chicana/o Studies, Cultural Studies, Latina/o Studies, Women's Studies, and Transnational Feminisms.

Samuel's erudite and comprehensive review is fast becoming an indispenable tool to any serious student of Tibetan religious life (of whatever hue). Encompassing a breathtaking range of literature and information, the author's forte lies in his ability to convey the sheer vastness of extant scholarly material on Tibet, without at the same time getting bogged down in an excessively scholastic vocabulary and style. Readers should take note that this is certainly NOT a book for uncommitted beginners, or for those that want a feel-good dip into Buddhism (although the determined reader could reasonably treat it as introductory), but rather represents a comprehensive and in-depth guide for those who seek to become truly well-informed about one of the world's deepest and most facinating religious civilizations.

Samuel may have set a standard with this book for Buddhist studies. It is not an easy book, for example because of its thoroughness and the difficult issues it tackles, but it is well-presented and seems convincing. I, at any rate, would not want to debate Samuel on its positions.

When looking at Buddhist books, it seems many provide only a superficial context for the deep concepts they present. Introductory works on Buddhism or teachings by a modern teacher may assume or disregard your knowledge of key cultures and a vast history of development. It may be that the writer or teacher is him/herself unaware of that background. Of course, that "background" may be so big as to make it impossible to focus on any present teaching.

What is key to Samuel's study is his correction to the mistaken assumption that Tibetan religion consists almost entirely of the Dalai Lama and the clerical orders. That's not to deny their importance but Samuels puts them into perspective. That Tibetan religion can be as complex as it is is staggering: one wonders how any Tibetan can make use of it. Perhaps having grown up in that culture, it seems natural. Samuels, at any rate, for the non-Tibetan reader, shows how far Buddhism in Tibet has moved from Theravada Buddhism and clerical Tibetan Buddhism into shamanism, Tantra, Bon and Dzogchen ...

After reading this study, I'd expect any individual seeking to practice Buddhist will still be left wondering how to make use of such a rich spiritual tradition (or whether that richness hadn't become excessive). But "Civilized Shamans" suggests a great deal of creative religious activity, at least some of which may fascinate you.