This article is a reflection on a year of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in and around a lesbian and gay community center in London. The research was concerned with the ways in which working class lesbian and bisexual women experience the meanings of their sexual identities on an everyday basis. I conducted participant observation in a variety of settings. Activities I took part in included v...

Based on the experience of researching and writing a book on urban policing in France and its reception by the media and various audiences, this essay discusses the challenges facing a public ethnography—distinguished from public sociology or anthropology. First, I differentiate two tasks (popularizing and politicizing) and multiple publics (imagined or encountered). Second, I plead for the exp...

There has been a lot of interest in ethnography within human–computer interaction over the last two decades, and its relevance within systems development is today beyond question. However, one of the challenges reported is that ethnography generates findings and knowledge with such contextual richness that it can be hard to transfer into system design. In the light of recent years’ push for the...

Social scientists are increasingly interested in the new organizational forms known as epistemic communities, knowledge networks, or communities of practice, depending on the discipline. These forms are made possible by new communication technologies, but they can be difficult to study qualitatively, often because their human, social, cultural, or symbolic capital is transmitted over significan...

Sensory ethnography has been employed to proffer anthropological understandings that extend beyond the written word, and in many cases, sensory ethnographers have gravitated toward the study of both contemporary and traditional livelihoods. Yet ethnographic inquiries made outside of textual forms of representation, inclusive of those concerning livelihoods, are projects that are often contested...

BACKGROUND Studies that systematically search for and synthesise qualitative research are becoming more evident in health care, and they can make an important contribution to patient care. However, there is still no agreement as to whether, or how we should appraise studies for inclusion. We aimed to explore the intuitive processes that determined the 'quality' of qualitative research for inclu...