#  A Great Book about Writing Ethnographies  

 





June 09, 2013

 

 

   ![narayan.jpg](/sites/g/files/omnuum3566/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/kristenghodsee/files/narayan_0.jpg?itok=NJbquqCR) 

 

I picked up Kirin Narayan’s *Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov* back in November at the Anthropology meetings in San Francisco, but I finally got around to reading it now. I was really impressed with this book and its practical advice and useful writing exercises. Narayan, who is an ethnographer as well as a novelist and memoirist, understands that the product of most social scientific research is a written document, whether it is a dissertation, a book, a book chapter or a journal article. Too often graduate training focuses solely on the methodology of doing a study. Little attention is paid to how one writes up the results. This is a beautifully written guide to writing. I highly recommend it to any aspiring (or seasoned) cultural anthropologist. 

 

 

 



 

 

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