Building on the "studying up" trend in anthropology, this book offers a theoretically informed guide to ethnographic methods that is also practical in approach, and reflects the challenges and concerns of contemporary ethnography. Students draw from vignettes situated within North America to learn how various methods work in the real world, and how ethnography informs contemporary anthropological theory. Exercises and assignments encourage students to practice these methods in a familiar context, and a sustained focus on visual methodologies offers coverage not found in other books. The result is a text that discusses both practical and theoretical issues in contemporary ethnography while equipping students with a set of transferable skills.

Lynda Mannik is the author of Canadian Indian Cowboys in Australia: Representation, Rodeo and the RCMP at the Royal Easter Show, 1939 (2006) and Photography, Memory and Refugee Identity: The Voyage of the S.S. Walnut, 1948 (2013). Additional scholarship has appeared in Visual Studies, Memory Studies, and Journalism Studies. She has been a visiting assistant professor at Trent University, Peterborough, and Memorial University, St. John’s. She currently teaches anthropology at York University in Toronto. Her research focuses on visual media, memory, and affect in various photographic realms.

Lynda Mannik's profile page

Karen McGarry is an assistant professor of anthropology at McMaster University, Hamilton. She previously held positions in the anthropology departments at Trent and York universities. Broadly speaking, her research focuses upon two areas of interest: the anthropology of sport, with an interest in high-performance and competitive sport; and educational anthropology. She is a co-author of Cultural Anthropology: A Problem-Based Approach (2013), and her work has appeared in Genders, The Gendered Society Reader, Reviews in Anthropology, The Sport Journal, and elsewhere.

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"In Practicing Ethnography, the authors offer a well-constructed volume created to guide students of cultural anthropology in developing themselves as ethnographer...It provides an extremely useful structure for instructors to base courses on while still being loose enough for one to incorporate their own touches."

Journal of Folklore Research