Ethnography as Craft: Observations on a Fortunate Career^*

This chapter represents a personalized account of ethnography. As such, I have cobbled together a partial confessional – as they all are – out of the two penny nails of past papers, books, talks, and personal experience. I write as something of a literary strumpet whose task is to “teach myself.” Meager subject it may be but, presumably, I have the requisite expertise. What I have to offer is a series of observation as to what my take on ethnography is today and how it developed over my career. It is an enlarging, booming scholarly and applied field – long escaped from its relatively insulated anthropological and sociological origins. As has become evident of late, the field has many adherents around the globe who subscribe to particular perspectives and practices that may differ in various ways from my own. However, the gist of this writing is to give an account of my own ethnographic perspective and practice which in part rests on chance and serendipity.