Interrogating Ethnography

Steven Lubet is the Williams Memorial Professor of Law at Northwestern University. He is the author of fifteen books and over 120 articles on the history, ethics, and practice of law.

• PrefaceIntroduction: The Ethnographic TrialChapter One: Testimony Chapter Two: Opinion and DocumentationChapter Three: Unreliability Chapter Four: Credulity Chapter Five: SelectivityChapter Six: Rumors and Folklore Chapter Seven: Anonymity Chapter Eight: Criminality Conclusion: Toward Evidence-Based Ethnography

"This is a critically important book that takes aim at how ethnographers gather their information and make their arguments. Lubet's bold critique demands attention from all ethnographers, and those who read ethnography." --Shamus Khan, Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology, Columbia University"In Interrogating Ethnography, Lubet brings a detective's eye to the stories that ethnographers tell in order to offer timely and important interventions about the relevance-indeed urgency-for credibility, reliability, and objectivity in the narratives academics craft about their research subjects." --Michele Goodwin, Chancellor's Professor and Director at the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy, University of California, Irvine School of Law"Interrogating Ethnography reminds an important discipline that it seeks to learn and publish the truth. Lubet holds ethnography to the standards that he applies to his own research, and the results are bracing." --Anita Bernstein, Anita and Stuart Subotnick Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School"Despite the growth of ethnographic research as a respected methodology in the social sciences and increasingly in public policy, the standards for what constitutes findings of fact remain obscure and uncertain. Lubet has performed a vital service by describing how field researchers should think about the validity and credibility of the data that they gather. Interrogating Ethnography will become essential reading for anyone interested in reading orwriting participant observation." --Gary Alan Fine, James E. Johnson Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University"This book is an essential critique of the most public-facing product sociology has to offer. This book really should be required in every sociology (and anthropology-I'm looking at you, too!) graduate methods class, and probably for undergrad methods classes, too. It's a fast, easy read, and lays bare the issues in an admirably clear way that earns it the Contexts' Seal of Approval." --Contexts