In Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes, Robert M. Emerson, Rachel I.
Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw present a series of guidelines, suggestions,
and practical advice for creating useful fieldnotes in a variety of
settings, demystifying a process that is often assumed to be intuitive
and impossible to teach. Using actual unfinished notes as examples, the
authors illustrate options for composing, reviewing, and working
fieldnotes into finished texts. They discuss different organizational
and descriptive strategies and show how transforming direct observations
into vivid descriptions results not simply from good memory but from
learning to envision scenes as written. A good ethnographer, they
demonstrate, must learn to remember dialogue and movement like an actor,
to see colors and shapes like a painter, and to sense moods and rhythms
like a poet. This new edition reflects the extensive feedback the
authors have received from students and instructors since the first
edition was published in 1995. As a result, they have updated the race,
class, and gender section, created new sections on coding programs and
revising first drafts, and provided new examples of working notes. An
essential tool for budding social scientists, the second edition of
Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes will be invaluable for a new
generation of researchers entering the field.