General Introduction: What Ethnography Tells Us about Prisons and What Prisons Tell Us about Ethnography

  • Deborah H. Drake
  • Rod Earle
  • Jennifer Sloan
Chapter
Part of the Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology book series (PSIPP)

Abstract

The practice of ethnography as a research method has a long history that places special importance on understanding the perspectives of the people under study and of observing their activities in everyday life (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1983). It is a method used by researchers in a variety of disciplines, but it is perhaps most famously associated with social anthropology and the study of indigenous cultures (Malinowski, 1922; Evans-Pritchard, 1937; Turnbull, 1961). Ethnographers aim to produce rich and detailed accounts of people and the social processes they are embedded in. For these reasons, it is often employed by educational, health and social sciences researchers in a wide variety of institutional, community and other social settings.

Keywords

General Introduction Ethnographic Research Prison System Criminological Research Ethnographic Approach 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Deborah H. Drake, Rod Earle and Jennifer Sloan 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  • Deborah H. Drake
  • Rod Earle
  • Jennifer Sloan

There are no affiliations available

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