The Ethnographic Imagination

In this book, a renowned sociologist and ethnographer aims to renew and develop the ethnographic craft across the disciplines. Drawing from numerous examples of his own past and current work, the author shows that ethnographic practice and the ethnographic imagination are vital to understanding the creativity and irreducibility of experience in all aspects of social and cultural practice.

The author argues that ethnography plays a vital role in constituting "sensuousness" in textual, methodological, and substantive ways, but it can do this only through the deployment of an associated theoretical imagination which cannot be easily found in the field. He presents a bold and incisive ethnographically oriented view of the world, emphasizing the need for a deep-running social but also aesthetic sensibility. In doing so he brings new insights to the understanding of human action and its dialectical relation to social and symbolic structures. He makes original contributions to the understanding of the contemporary human uses of objects, artifacts, and communicative forms, presenting a new analysis of commodity fetishism as central to consumption and to the wider social relations of contemporary societies. He also utilizes his perspective to further the understanding of the contemporary crisis in masculinity and to cast new light on various lived everyday cultures -- at school, on the dole, on the street, in the mall, in front of TV, and in the dance club.