Ethnography (Journal)

Ethnography, published by Sage, was launched in 2000. The current editors are Loïc Wacquant (University of California, USA) and Paul Willis (University of Keele, UK). Ethnography has an international editorial board with representatives from the United States and the United Kingdom but also Brazil, Denmark, France, India, Korea, the Netherlands, and Sweden. The journal's website outlines its scope. However, this was also set out in the “Manifesto for Ethnography” published in the journal's first edition. Four distinguishing features of Ethnography are articulated. First, the journal seeks to promote “theoretical informed-ness” rather than the pursuit of increasingly self-referential “grand narratives” of the social sciences or, on the other hand, merely descriptive research. Second, Ethnography seeks to recognize the centrality of culture in the broadest sense rather than narrowly discursive sense. Third, the journal seeks a critical focus on research and writing. Fourth, Ethnography promotes an interest in cultural policy and politics.

Consistent with its interdisciplinary focus, Ethnography has produced several special issues focusing on topics of scholarly interest that invite participation from disparate disciplines: “Global Ethnography” (2001, Vol. 2, Issue 2), “Dissecting the Prison” (2002, Vols. 3 and 4), “Pierre Bourdieu in the Field' (2004, [Page 293]Vol. 5, Issue 4), “Phenomenology in Ethnography” (2003, Vol. 4, Issue 3), “Grounds for a Spatial Ethnography of Labor” (2005, Vol. 6, Issue 3), and “Worlds of Journalism” (2006, Vol. 7, Issue 1).

In 2003, Ethnography and the Center for Urban Ethnography at the University of California, Berkeley, held a conference on “Ethnography for a New Century: Practice, Predicament, Promise.” This brought together academics from anthropology and sociology, with one aim being to clarify the standards of the journal.

Ethnography does not appear in the Journal Citation Reports and, hence, has no impact factor. Its website does, however, usefully provide a monthly updated list of the 50 most frequently read articles (based on hits received by articles archived on the site) and a list of the 50 most frequently cited articles (based on citations from articles in HighWire-hosted journals). For example, for the month beginning November 1, 2006, the two most frequently cited articles were Michael Burawoy, Pavel Krotov, and Tatyana Lytkina's “Involution and Destitution in Capitalist Russia” and Burawoy's introduction to the special issue on global ethnography, “Manufacturing the Global.”