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Style Matters: Ethnography as Method and Genre
Author(s) -
Sharman Russell Leigh
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
anthropology and humanism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.153
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1548-1409
pISSN - 1559-9167
DOI - 10.1525/ahu.2007.32.2.117
Subject(s) - ethnography , evocation , style (visual arts) , narrative , pragmatism , sociology , discipline , politics , aesthetics , epistemology , anthropology , social science , literature , art , philosophy , political science , law
This article examines the potential for narrative style to reposition experience as central to the anthropological project. A disciplinary dichotomy between form and substance in ethnographic writing has privileged a discursive turn away from lived experience, the bedrock of ethnographic data. Drawing on the insights of experimental ethnography and pragmatist philosophy, this article critiques this dichotomy, arguing for the methodological importance of narrative style in ethnographic writing both as an evocation of fieldwork experience and as an act of authentic political engagement. This article will draw on examples from the author's work in Costa Rica and New York City.