Being Ethnographic: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Ethnography

Citation

Madden, R. (2022). Being Ethnographic: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Ethnography (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications.

Chapter Summary

The third edition runs to about 232 pages and is organised in four parts with ten chapters: three parts follow the course of an ethnographic project (concepts, fieldwork, writing), and a fourth extends the method into new settings. The publisher presents it as an introductory guidebook to doing fieldwork in real-world settings, with a running emphasis on methodological reflexivity: the ways the ethnographer's own interests, biases and ideologies shape the research. A review of the first edition (Jodie Taylor, Journal of Sociology, 2011) noted that Madden opens by introducing himself to the reader and draws throughout on his own fieldwork, including his work as a non-Indigenous researcher in Australian Aboriginal communities, and that each chapter ends with questions, discussion topics and suggested further reading.

Part I, Key Concepts and Theoretical Frames: 'Definitions', Methods and Applications; Ethnographic Fields: Home and Away

The first part sets out flexible working definitions of ethnography and what it is used for. On the first edition, Taylor singles out the advice on balancing emic (insider) and etic (outsider) understandings, on ethics, and on the differences between anthropological and sociological ethnography. The second chapter, on fields "home and away", deals with how a field site is conceived: Taylor describes guidance on its geographical, social and emotional multiplicity, illustrated from the author's own fieldwork.

Part II, Doing Ethnography: Talking to People: Negotiations, Conversations and Interviews; Being with People: Participation; Looking at People: Observations and Images

The middle part covers the three core activities of fieldwork, in chapters on talking, being with, and looking. The first takes in negotiating access as well as conversation and interviewing; the second treats participation and field relationships; the third treats observation and the "ethnographic gaze", including visual methods. Taylor found the interviewing and observation advice plain-spoken and practical, and praised the discussion of both the potential and the limits of visual ethnography, as well as the attention to power relations and the researcher's social position. The publisher lists new material on intersubjectivity in the third edition.

Part III, Inscription: Description: Writing 'Down' Fieldnotes; Analysis to Interpretation: Writing 'Out' Data; Interpretation to Story: Writing 'Up' Ethnography

The third part divides writing into three stages: recording in the field, analysing and interpreting the data, and composing the finished account. In the first edition, according to Taylor, the fieldnotes chapter examined the purposes of note-taking and of visual and audio recording, the analysis chapter drew on the author's doctoral research to show the problems of "distilling" data, and the last chapter broke the construction of an ethnographic story into a four-step process. The third edition adds information on digital inscription tools and a practical guide to qualitative data analysis software.

Part IV, Expanding Ethnography: Online Ethnography (with Dr Andrew Whalley); Conclusion: Ethnographic Horizons

The final part moves beyond conventional face-to-face fieldwork. The online ethnography chapter, written with Andrew Whalley, carries the edition's new coverage of cyberethnography and social media. The conclusion looks at the method's horizons; the publisher mentions expanded material on ethnography with animals, a topic Taylor identified in the first edition as Madden's main example of where the limits of intersubjectivity test the method. An endorsement quoted by the publisher also mentions post-pandemic fieldwork.

Key Concepts

Part I: Key Concepts and Theoretical Frames

• Ethnography as a way of being: the book's framing, in its title, that ethnography is a disposition of the researcher as well as a set of techniques.
• Emic and etic: insider and outsider perspectives on behaviour, which the opening chapters ask the novice to balance.
• The field, home and away: the field site as something constructed by the researcher, whether distant or close to home.

Part II: Doing Ethnography

• Access and negotiation: the first stage of talking to people, before conversation and interviewing.
• Participation: being with people over time as the basis of ethnographic knowledge.
• Observation and images: looking as a method, with its visual extensions and their limits.
• Methodological reflexivity: attending to how the researcher's position and biases shape what is observed and written.

Part III: Inscription

• Writing 'down', 'out' and 'up': the book's three-stage model of fieldnotes, analysis and final text.
• Qualitative analysis software: the digital tools for organising and coding data that the third edition adds.

Part IV: Expanding Ethnography

• Online ethnography: fieldwork in digital spaces and social media, treated as a field in its own right.
• Intersubjectivity: shared understanding between researcher and participants, and its limits, including with animals.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A clear path through a whole project. The four parts follow an ethnography from definitions through fieldwork to writing, and then into newer settings. Taylor described the first edition as clearly defined and logically structured, and the three-chapter treatment of writing (down, out, up) gives a usable model for a stage that methods books often treat briefly.
• Theory and practice together. The book's subtitle and Taylor's review agree that it joins how to "do" ethnography with how to think about it, grounding the advice in the author's own experiences in the field rather than in abstract rules.
• Reflexivity and ethics throughout. The publisher puts the researcher's interests, biases and ideologies at the centre of the third edition, and the review highlights practical guidance on power relations and positionality, ethics, and the emotional and embodied side of fieldwork.
• Short and updated. At about 232 pages it can be read in full in a term. The third edition adds online ethnography, digital inscription tools and analysis software, and expanded work on animals, so it is not limited to a single village-based model of fieldwork.

Limitations

• Gaps noted by a reviewer. Taylor found the first edition thin on autobiographical methods and autoethnography and on feminist ethnography, and thought the discussion of ethnographic writing styles and voices left readers short of guidance on when to use which. These remarks concern the first edition; the third edition's contents do not show a chapter on any of these topics.
• Not a manual of techniques. The book is an introductory guide of modest length. Readers who need detailed procedures for sampling, structured data collection or quantitative analysis, or extended help with fieldnote writing, will need fuller methods texts.
• Strongly personal. The reliance on the author's own fieldwork is a strength for readability, but it means the examples come largely from one researcher's projects, so students should also read published ethnographies to see a wider range of practice.

Where It Fits in the Course

Within the ethnographic methods list, Madden is a short first book: it explains what ethnography is and what it asks of the researcher before any project begins. David Fetterman's Ethnography: Step-by-Step is its practical counterpart, a stage-by-stage guide written from applied and evaluation research; students who want procedures will find Fetterman more directive, while Madden spends more time on reflexivity and on the nature of the field. Reading both at the start of a course gives the reasons and the routines together.

Martyn Hammersley and Paul Atkinson's Ethnography: Principles in Practice is the more systematic next step, a full account of ethnography as a reflexive process from research design to writing. Robert Emerson, Rachel Fretz and Linda Shaw's Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes expands what Madden's Part III introduces, and H. Russell Bernard and Amber Wutich's Research Methods in Anthropology is a comprehensive methods textbook covering qualitative and quantitative approaches. James Clifford and George Marcus's edited collection Writing Culture is the critical background to Madden's concern with how ethnographic accounts are written and authorised; it reads best after Madden's chapter on writing up.

How to Use This Book

The book suits undergraduates preparing a first ethnographic project or a fieldwork module, and graduate students from other disciplines who need an orientation to ethnography. No prior methods training is assumed.

• Before fieldwork: read Part I and Part II in order. The opening chapters establish what kind of knowledge ethnography produces and how a field is defined; the three "people" chapters are the core of the practical advice.
• During fieldwork: keep the fieldnotes chapter at hand, and return to the participation and observation chapters when relationships or access become difficult.
• After fieldwork: read the analysis and writing-up chapters together; if working with software, the third edition's practical guide applies here.
• Optional by project: the online ethnography chapter for digital or social-media fieldwork; the conclusion for work with animals or for a broader view of where the method is heading.

Use the end-of-chapter questions and discussion topics, a feature of the book since the first edition, as seminar prompts or as a reflexive journal: answering them about one's own project is a direct way to practise the reflexivity the book asks for. Follow the suggested readings into published ethnographies, and pair the writing chapters with a fuller treatment of fieldnotes when the project depends heavily on observation.