Recomended Reading
Some suggested reading materials
Ethnographies
“Ethnographies” are detailed descriptions of social life in different times and places. Traditionally, ethnographies focused in-depth on a group of people such as the Nuer or a particular North Indian Village. Today, they are just as likely to focus on a particular aspect of social life such as new reproductive technologies, meanings of the veil, home decoration or even being a Millwall football club fan! Ethnographies can be really interesting to read and give you a fascinating insight into a place or group of people. In their ethnographies anthropologists often write about their experiences of doing research; how they felt, what it was like to live in an unfamiliar place, so they are also good ways to find out what it might be like to be a professional anthropologist.
Here are some particularly accessible ones:
Buy Now- An Anthropologist in Japan: Glimpses of Life in the Field
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A highly personal narrative from the perspective of an anthropologist studying life in Japan. This is not an ethnography as such but rather an insight into how one is produced and what it feels like to live and work in a different culture.
Buy Now- Songs at the River's Edge: Stories from a Bangladeshi Village
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Part autobiography, part travelogue, part anthropological study, this is an account of a young anthropologist living in a Muslim Bangladeshi village for 18 months.
Buy Now- The Sport of Kings: Kinship, Class and Thoroughbred Breeding in Newmarket
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The Sport of Kings is an ethnography of the British racing industry based upon two years of participant observation in Newmarket, the international headquarters of flat racing.
Buy Now- Veiled Sentiments: Honour and Poetry in a Bedouin Society
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Studies the oral lyric poetry of the Bedouins of the Western Desert of Egypt for its reflections on attitudes toward honor, sentiment, Bedouin life, and the place of women in their society.
