I Remember, one of French writer Georges Perec s most famous pieces, consists of 480 numbered paragraphs each just a few short lines recalling a memory from his childhood. The work has neither a beginning nor an end. Nor does it contain any analysis. But it nonetheless reveals profound truths about French society during the 1940s and 50s.
Taking Perec s book as its cue, Telling About Society explores the unconventional ways we communicate what we know about society to others. The third in distinguished teacher Howard Becker s best-selling series of writing guides for social...

Collaboration between ethnographers and subjects has long been a product of the close, intimate relationships that define ethnographic research. But increasingly, collaboration is no longer viewed as merely a consequence of fieldwork; instead collaboration now preconditions and shapes research design as well as its dissemination. As a result, ethnographic subjects are shifting from being informants to being consultants. The emergence of collaborative ethnography highlights this relationship between consultant and ethnographer, moving it to center stage as a calculated part not only of...

Writers know only too well how long it can take and how awkward it can be to describe spatial relationships with words alone. And while a map might not always be worth a thousand words, a good one can help writers communicate an argument or explanation clearly, succinctly, and effectively.
In his acclaimed "How to Lie with Maps, " Mark Monmonier showed how maps can distort facts. In "Mapping it Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences, " he shows authors and scholars how they can use expository cartography the visual, two-dimensional organization of information...