Public Ethnography: Connecting New Genres, New Media, New Audiences

How can ethnographers make their voices better heard? How can ethnographic research become more popular? How can different ethnographic genres and new and traditional communication media facilitate the popularization of ethnographic research? As several commentators have outlined, ethnography is uniquely positioned to appeal to the general public yet it is still distinctly absent in popular media such as television, radio, and digital platforms such as iTunes. When carried out with the information and entertainment needs and wants of the public in mind, ethnographic research has the potential to reach beyond the confines of academic discourse and can position social scientific knowledge at the nexus of public debate, current affairs, and popular culture. A fully public ethnography can better engage multiple stakeholders and can play a key role in the critical pedagogy of the general public. But how can this be achieved in practice? And at what costs and risk? Public Ethnography: Connecting New Genres, New Media, New Audiences is intended to be an intimate gathering of ethnographers—both faculty and students—across all social scientific fields and disciplines.