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Book synopsis

Scholars have long recognized that ethnographic method is bound up with the construction of theory in ways that are difficult to teach. The reason, Allaine Cerwonka and Liisa H. Malkki argue, is that ethnographic theorization is essentially improvisational in nature, conducted in real time and in necessarily unpredictable social situations. In a unique account of, and critical reflection on, the process of theoretical improvisation in ethnographic research, the authors demonstrate how both objects of analysis and our ways of knowing and explaining them are created and discovered in the give and take of real life, in all its immediacy. "Improvising Theory" centers on the year-long correspondence between Cerwonka, then a graduate student in political science conducting research in Australia, and her anthropologist mentor, Malkki. Through regular e-mail exchanges, Malkki attempted to teach Cerwonka, then new to the discipline, the basic tools and subtle intuition needed for anthropological fieldwork. The result is a strikingly original dissection of the processual ethics and politics of method in ethnography.

Book details

Book category Books in English Society & social sciences Sociology & anthropology Sociology

• Full title: Improvising Theory
• Subtitle: Process and Temporality in Ethnographic Fieldwork
• Author: Allaine Cerwonka, Liisa H. Malkki
• Language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224
• EAN: 9780226100319
• ISBN: 0226100316
• ID: 04543286
• Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
• Weight: 342 g
• Dimensions: 230 × 157 × 12 mm
• Date of publishing: 15. July 2007

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