Urban ethnography : Its traditions and its future

Dublin Core

The articles collected in this special issue are based on papers presented at the Yale Urban Ethnography Conference, ‘Urban Ethnography: Its Traditions and Its Future’, held at Yale University in the spring of 2008.

The ethnographic field study is founded on the observation and rendering of nuance, texture, and the lives of the subjects.Informed by sociological theory, the ethnographer employs a careful, bottom-up approach to field observations and representations of how people are actually living their everyday lives, interacting with others, making decisions, and understanding their own social situations (Junker and Hughes, 1960). This research yields qualitative data which then enriches our understanding of existing theories and provides the groundwork for the development of new concepts, informing future study. Sustained ethnographic fieldwork aims at accumulating a store of ‘local knowledge’ (Geertz, 1983) and takes seriously the study of the ways in which ordinary people make sense of their social worlds, and navigate within them.

These basic ethnographic questions persist and guide us: how do city dwellers go about meeting the exigencies of their everyday lives; what is their interpretation and ‘definition of the situation’; and how ultimately do they make sense of their social worlds? In addressing these concerns, exciting newresearch by accomplished younger fieldworkers and reflections by established ethnographers are brought together in this special issue.