CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE CLIENT KIND
Am I ready for this? What will they be like? What will I be like? Nothing is more equally exciting and frightening for a young anthropologist than entering into the field for the first time. As I imagine Margaret Mead daydreamed about the exotic South Pacific before she arrived in person, I fantasize about the corporate world with both excitement and horror. What will it be like? Am I ready?
Renewing Our Practice: Preparing the next generation of practitioners
A key aspect of renewal is disciplinary renewal though the addition of new practitioners, who can bring revitalization to our practice. To successfully land their first job, today's new practitioners need practical, relevant basic skills and knowledge, which they can acquire through a range of training programs. In this paper, we reflect upon the significant methodological, interpretive, ethical implications of such training programs for ethnographic praxis in industry. How they evolve and change the work, how new knowledge is created in the field and what that may mean for the future renewal of our practice begins with how they are trained.
Reflections on ethnography, ethics and inebriation
Due to the persistent influence of positivism in leisure research and a belief that researchers, even participant observers, should be sober data collectors to produce legitimate and rigorous research findings, few researchers detail their experiences of drinking during fieldwork. However, rigorous ethnographic research must engage in the lived experiences of the participants and also provide a clear account of the research process. Therefore, this article provides a reflexive account of ethnographic research with a cricket and social club for whom drinking (to excess) is normative. While alcohol consumption was a critical component of developing rapport, it also, at times, compromised data collection, researcher and participant safety and raised ethical concerns about informed consent. The strategies used to respond to methodological challenges and ethical quandaries associated with alcohol consumption with and by participants are described.