“To collaborate means, literally, to work together, especially in an intellectual effort. While collaboration is central to the practice of ethnography, realizing a more deliberate and explicit collaborative ethnography implies resituating collaborative practice at every stage of the ethnographic process, from fieldwork to writing and back again.”
Lassiter, 2005: 15
“We might sum up collaborative ethnography as an approach to ethnography that deliberately and explicitly emphasizes collaboration at every point in the ethnographic process, without veiling it—from project conceptualization, to fieldwork, and, especially, through the writing process. Collaborative ethnography invites commentary from our consultants and seeks to make that commentary overtly part of the ethnographic text as it develops. In turn, this negotiation is reintegrated back into the fieldwork process itself. Importantly, the process yields texts that are co-conceived or cowritten with local communities of collaborators and consider multiple audiences outside the confines of academic discourse, including local constituencies. These texts can—and often do—include multiple authors; but not exclusively so. Collaborative ethnography, then, is both a theoretical and a methodological approach for doing and writing ethnography.”
Lassiter, 2005: 15
The above quotes summarise Lassiter’s definition of collaborative ethnography. There are many different definitions and understandings of collaboration in ethnographic research, which will be exploring throughout this website.
For now, follow some of the key further reading references and make some notes below about your initial understanding of how a collaborative approach to research will affect what you do and how you carry out your ethnographic research.
Key Further Reading: What is Collaborative Ethnography?
Charles, N. And Crow, G. (2012) “Special issue: community restudies and social change”, The Sociological Review 60 (3).
Lassiter: E. (2005) The Chicago Guide to Collaborative Ethnography; Chicago: University of Chicago Press; p. 15-24.
Doing collaborative ethnography 