Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes

Citation

Emerson, R. M., Fretz, R. I., & Shaw, L. L. (2011). Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press.

Chapter Summary

The book is a practical guide of eight chapters and about 245 pages of text, published in the Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing. The publisher describes it as a set of guidelines and practical advice for creating useful fieldnotes in many settings, which demystifies a process often assumed to be intuitive and impossible to teach. The authors use actual unfinished notes as examples to show how to compose, review and work fieldnotes into finished texts. Geraint Osborne's review in the Canadian Journal of Sociology (2012) adds that the authors draw on an interactionist, interpretive perspective and treat fieldnote writing as a skill that can be learned through study and practice.

Chapter 1: Fieldnotes in Ethnographic Research

The opening chapter (about twenty pages) explains the pivotal role of fieldnotes in ethnographic work. Its sections cover ethnographic participation, the complexities of description, inscribing experienced and observed realities, and the implications for writing fieldnotes, and it ends with reflections on writing fieldnotes and ethnographic practice.

Chapter 2: In the Field: Participating, Observing, and Jotting Notes

This chapter is about the field itself. Its sections are participating in order to write, what jottings are, and how, where and when to make them, with a reflection on writing and ethnographic marginality. Osborne's review notes that it explains how observations move from mere "headnotes" to jottings that jog memory later, and discusses the benefits and risks of overt and covert procedures.

Chapter 3: Writing Fieldnotes I: At the Desk, Creating Scenes on a Page

The first of two chapters on writing, at about forty-four pages. It moves from field to desk and covers recalling in order to write, writing detailed notes that depict scenes, organizational strategies for narrating a day's entry, and asides and commentaries as in-process analytic writing. According to the review, it includes narrative strategies such as description, dialogue and characterization.

Chapter 4: Writing Fieldnotes II: Multiple Purposes and Stylistic Options

The second chapter on writing deals with stance and audience, perspective, extended "fieldnote tales" and in-process memos. In Osborne's account it discourages the omniscient point of view and weighs the strengths of first-person, third-person and focused third-person narration.

Chapter 5: Pursuing Members' Meanings

This chapter takes up the meanings used by the people studied. Its sections contrast imposing exogenous meanings with representing members' meanings, and look at members' categories in use, at race, gender, class and members' meanings, and at local events and social forces. Osborne reads it as arguing that observing and recording naturally occurring talk is more useful than interviews for representing community members' voices.

Chapter 6: Processing Fieldnotes: Coding and Memoing

The chapter treats the notes as a data set to be read, coded and memoed: open coding, writing code memos, selecting themes, focused coding and integrative memos, ending with a reflection on creating theory from fieldnotes. The review calls the approach grounded-theory based and notes that, in practice, the researcher moves back and forth between reading, coding and writing.

Chapter 7: Writing an Ethnography

This chapter shows how to move from fieldnotes to a finished text: developing a thematic narrative, transposing fieldnotes into ethnographic text and producing a completed ethnographic document. The review summarizes the recommended form as fieldnote-centered thematic narratives, with excerpts and analytical commentary interspersed.

Chapter 8: Conclusion

A short closing chapter of about six pages, followed by notes, references and an index.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–2: Fieldnotes in the Field

• Headnotes and jottings: what a researcher remembers, and the brief written triggers that preserve it until the notes are written up.
• Participating in order to write: a section of Chapter 2 on taking part in settings with the aim of recording them later.

Chapters 3–4: Writing Fieldnotes

• Scenes: depictions of events, with description, dialogue and characterization, written so they can be reread.
• Asides, commentaries and in-process memos: short analytic writing set within the notes.
• Stance and perspective: the choice of first-person, third-person or focused third-person narration.

Chapters 5–8: Meanings, Coding and Ethnography

• Members' meanings: the categories and terms that the people being studied use themselves.
• Open and focused coding: reading the notes line by line, then returning to selected themes.
• Integrative memos: writing that connects coded themes to build an argument.
• Thematic narrative: the form of final ethnography built around themes illustrated by fieldnote excerpts.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A teachable skill. The book treats fieldnote writing as something that can be learned and practiced, and demonstrates it with actual fieldnotes by students and by the authors. Osborne praises its explicitness.
• Follows the stages of a novice. The review says two chapters on writing were substantially reorganized in this edition to follow the stages through which beginners learn.
• Links notes to analysis and writing. Coding, memoing and the production of a thematic narrative are part of the same sequence, so the book shows how notes become an ethnography.
• Updated edition. The publisher says the authors responded to feedback from students and instructors, updated the section on race, class and gender, and added new examples of working notes. The review judges it accessible to undergraduates but rich enough for experienced ethnographers.

Limitations

• Narrow scope by design. Osborne notes that the authors intentionally omit some stages of fieldwork, such as gaining access, maintaining relations in the field, conducting interviews and leaving the field, so the book must be combined with a general methods text.
• A particular intellectual stance. The review points to an interactionist, interpretive approach drawing on symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology and interpretive anthropology; readers working in other traditions may need to adapt the advice.
• Some repetition. Osborne finds it slightly redundant at times.
• Coding programs are easy to miss. The publisher says the edition adds new sections on coding programs and on revising first drafts, but the chapter headings do not list them separately, so readers planning software-based analysis should check where they sit.

Where It Fits in the Course

Within this course list, Emerson, Fretz and Shaw is the specialist book on writing, and the one to read alongside fieldwork. Hammersley and Atkinson's Ethnography: Principles in Practice covers the whole research process with an emphasis on reasoning, including the access, relations and interviewing that Emerson and colleagues leave out. David Fetterman's Ethnography: Step-by-Step is a practical guide through each stage of a project, and Raymond Madden's Being Ethnographic is a guide for newcomers that has its own chapter on writing down fieldnotes. Bernard and Wutich's Research Methods in Anthropology is a comprehensive text covering qualitative and quantitative methods. Clifford and Marcus's Writing Culture is a collection of essays on the poetics and politics of ethnographic writing, a theoretical counterpart to the practical advice here.

How to Use This Book

The book is for students beginning or about to begin fieldwork, and for researchers who want to improve their note-taking. No prior fieldwork experience is needed; the review judges the book accessible to undergraduates.

A practical plan:

• Before fieldwork: read Chapters 1 and 2, and make a few trial jottings in a public place.
• During fieldwork: use Chapters 3 and 4 as a model for writing up each day's notes soon after, comparing your own with the examples; read Chapter 5 once you have collected a stretch of notes.
• After fieldwork: Chapters 6 and 7 for coding, memoing and writing.

Practice is the point: write up a short observation using each strategy, then reread to see what the notes capture and what they lose. Pair the book with a general methods text for access, interviewing and ethics, and with a published ethnography to see how thematic narratives built from fieldnotes appear in finished work.