Ethnography is a celebrated, if contested, research methodology that offers unprecedented access to people's intimate lives, their often hidden social worlds and the meanings they attach to these. The intensity of ethnographic fieldwork often makes considerable personal and emotional demands on the researcher, while the final product is a vivid human document with personal resonance impossible to recreate by the application of any other social science methodology. This series aims to highlight the best, most innovative ethnographic work available from both new and established scholars.
By Julie Valk
January 09, 2023
Based on twelve months of in-depth ethnographic research in Japan with retailers, customers, wholesalers, writers and craftspeople, Selling the Kimono is a journey behind the scenes of a struggle to adapt to difficult economic conditions and declining demand for the kimono. The kimono is an iconic ...
By Amie Matthews
December 30, 2022
In contemporary society, tourism and other forms of travel have become increasingly common. Tales of exploration, travel and discovery are also vigorously circulated in popular culture and on social media. In keeping with this, personal narratives of transformation and growth through travel have ...
By Amit Singh
October 21, 2022
This book is an immersive ethnographic account of how fighters at a Polish-owned Muay Thai/kickboxing gym in East London seek to reject prior identity markers in favour of constructing one another as the same, as fighters, a category supposedly free from the negative assumptions and limitations ...
By Angelo Martins Junior
February 01, 2022
Moving Difference demonstrates how differences between migrants who share the same nationality travel with them and can impact on every aspect of their ‘mobile lives’. Analysing the lived experiences and narratives of Brazilians in London, it adds an in-depth ethnographic understanding of the ...
By Jennifer Ward
January 17, 2019
This book is a detailed and close examination of the rave club drugs market as it took place in nightclubs, dance parties, pubs and bars and among friendship networks in London, in the mid to late 1990s. It focuses on the organizational features of drugs purchasing and selling and differentiates ...
By Kenny Monrose
August 06, 2020
While extensive attention has been paid to black youth, adult black British men are a notable omission in academic literature. This book is the first attempt to understand one of Britain’s hidden populations: the post-Windrush generation, who matured within a post-industrial British society that ...
By Brendan Marsh
September 25, 2019
Violence is widely associated with illegal drug markets, and is one of the features that can differentiate illegal capitalism from legitimate business. This book explores the perceived causes and functions of violence in an illegal drug market in Dublin City, Ireland. Understanding why violence ...
Edited
By Dick Hobbs
September 11, 2019
Geoffrey Pearson, who died in 2013, was one of the outstanding social scientists of the post second world war era. His work spanned social work, social theory, social history, criminology and sociology. In particular, his work has had a huge impact upon studies of youth, youth culture and drugs. ...
By Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard
July 31, 2019
Cape Town has some of the highest figures of violent crime in the world, but how is it that young men avoid and enact physical aggression and navigate stressful and dangerous situations? Surviving Gangs, Violence and Racism in Cape Town offers an ethnographic study of young men in Cape Town and ...
By Alejandro Nieto
July 29, 2019
How do musical practices move? Though technology increasingly plays a great part in establishing different degrees of spatial proximity, music making still seems to be tied to specific geographical locations, cultures or communities. The identity of musical traditions, in particular, is often ...
By Patrick Turner
July 17, 2019
'What is the real hip hop?' 'To whom does hip hop belong?' 'For what constructive purposes can hip hop be put to use?' These are three key questions posed by hip hop activists in Hip Hop Versus Rap, which explores the politics of cultural authenticity, ownership, and uplift in London’s post-hip hop...
By Les Back, Shamser Sinha
July 17, 2019
Migrant City tells the story of contemporary London from the perspective of thirty adult migrants and two sociologists. Connecting migrants’ private struggles to the public issues at stake in the way mobility is regulated, channelled and managed in a globalised world, this volume explores what ...
