Composing Ethnography Alternative Forms of Qualitative Writing

by Ellis, Carolyn; Bochner, Arthur P.

• ISBN13: 9780761991649
• ISBN10: 0761991646
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-08-27
• Publisher: AltaMira Press

Summary

What is it like to have lived with bulimia for most of your life? To have a mother who is retarded? To fight a health insurance company in order to survive breast cancer? Carolyn Ellis and Arthur P. Bochner have assembled innovative pieces which tackle these and other difficult questions, enlarging the space to practice ethnographic writing as the stories are told through memoirs, poetry, photography, and other creative forms usually associated with the arts. The authors demonstrate how ethnographic data can be converted into memorable experiences that readers can use in the classroom and everyday life.

Table of Contents

About the Editors	p. 7
Preface	p. 9
Introduction: Talking Over Ethnography	p. 13
Autobiology	p. 49
A Secret Life in a Culture of Thinness	p. 76
Reflections on Body, Food, and Bulimia
My Mother Is Mentally Retarded	p. 109
Thrown Overboard	p. 132
The Human Costs of Health Care Rationing
The Life Boat Is Fraught: Reflections on "Thrown Overboard"	p. 160
Collecting Ourselves at the End of the Century	p. 172
Reconstructing Apsaras from Memory Six Thoughts	p. 201
Kaleidoscope	p. 206
The Same and Different
Speech Lessons	p. 231
Maternal Connections	p. 240
An Ethnographic Act	p. 244
The Construction of Consensual Theatre
Devil, Not-Quite-White, Rootless Cosmopolitan	p. 267
Tsuris in Latin America, the Bronx, and the USSR	p. 267
"She Changes Everything She Touches"	p. 301
Ethnographic Journeys of Self-Discovery
Silent Voices	p. 330
A Subversive Reading of Child Sexual Abuse
Once My Father Traveled West to California	p. 357
Open-Ending: Readers Talk Back	p. 383
Name Index	p. 384
Subject Index	p. 390
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