Well, it looks like Ethnography.com is going through a third or fourth re-design! Christina Quigley is taking over the web-master duties and getting the blog ready for 2019! This comes after a 1-2 year hiatus when little new content was posted. This will hopefully change, as both Christina and I begin to post ethnographic observations from around the world. In Christina’s case, this will be some combination of Chico, California, and Tanzania. In my case, it will be some combination of Chico, California, and Thailand. I may be able to induce one or two others to begin blogging again, too!

After Christina redid the design, I had a new look at the mission statement which Julie Garza Withers and I put together about three years ago. I really like the statement, and our challenge to mainstream ethnography which is usually tucked away under a bureaucratic layer of regulation within dominant fields of sociology and anthropology. I also continue to really like the idea of our patron saints, which include two of our living favorites (Nigel Barley and Annette Lareau), and 5 or 6 more ancient predecessors. This is a reminder that we are not inventing things as we go along but standing on the shoulders (as Google Scholar says) of giants.

I think that this is standing the test of time, and I have left it as is. I was also impressed with the continuing tone set by our founder Mark Dawson whose wit and wisdom comes through in the writing style of not only the things he wrote, but in the style those of us who came after have borrowed.