Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes

In this companion volume to John van Maanen's Tales of the Field , three scholars reveal how the ethnographer turns direct experience and observation into written fieldnotes upon which an ethnography is based. Drawing on years of teaching and field research experience, the authors develop a series of guidelines, suggestions and practical advice about how to write useful fieldnotes in a variety of settings, both cultural and institutional. Using actual, unfinished working notes as examples, they illustrate options for composing, reviewing and working fieldnotes into finished texts. They discuss different organizational and descriptive strategies, including evocation of sensory detail, synthesis of complete scenes, the value of partial versus omniscient perspectives and of first-person versus third-person accounts. Of particular interest is the authors' discussion of notetaking as a mindset. They show how transforming direct observations into vivid descriptions results not simply from good memory but more crucially from learning to envision scenes as written. A good ethnographer, they argue, must learn to remember dialogue and movement like an actor, to see colours and shapes like a painter, and to sense moods and rhythms like a poet. The authors also emphasize the ethnographer's core interest in presenting the perceptions and meanings which the people studied attach to their own actions. They demonstrate the subtle ways that writers can make the voices of people heard in the texts they produce. Finally, they analyze the processing of fieldnotes - the practice of coding notes to identify themes and methods for selecting and weaving together fieldnote excerpts to write a polished ethnography. This book, however, is more than a how-to manual. The authors examine writing…