Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes
Abstract
In this book, three leading scholars develop a series of guidelines, suggestions, and practical advice about how to write useful fieldnotes in a variety of settings, both cultural and institutional. Using actual unfinished, "working" notes as examples, they 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 more crucially from learning 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. A vigorous and persuasive response to those who say that fieldnotes are too idiosyncratic, personal, and dependent on natural talent to allow formal instruction, this book shows that note-taking is a craft that can be taught. It is an essential tool for students and social scientists alike.
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As usual with qualitative analysis, the goal was not to achieve representativeness, but rather to identify meaningful patterns and variations.
“As usual with qualitative analysis, the goal was not to achieve representativeness, but rather to identify meaningful patterns and variations [63].”
From Situating mobile health: a qualitative study of mHealth expectations in the rural health district of Nouna, Burkina Faso (2017) · cites this paper as [63]
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- Authors
- Emerson, R. M., Fretz, R. I., & Shaw, L. L.
- Venue
- University of Chicago Press eBooks
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 1995
- OpenAlex
- W4205796131
- Cited by
- 4,204
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 83 · 2025: 167 · 2024: 157 · 2023: 295 · 2022: 172 · 2021: 181 · 2020: 223 · 2019: 256 · 2018: 272 · 2017: 219 · 2016: 212 · 2015: 252 · 2014: 227 · 2013: 208 · 2012: 219
- FWCI
- 24.32
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- University of Chicago Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics
- Social Sciences › Education › Qualitative Research Methods and Applications
- Social Sciences › Cultural Studies › Posthumanist Ethics and Activism
- Keywords
- note-taking skills, ethnographic writing, descriptive writing, observation and description
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
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