In recent years, many ethnographers have conducted participant observation studies in virtual worlds, whether in games like World of Warcraft or user-generated environments like Second Life. However, the acceptance of digital fieldwork as a legitimate form of ethnography does not make it strictly identical to its physical counterpart. In particular, the logistics of virtual ethnography offer bo...

BACKGROUND Contextual factors associated with health care settings make reducing health care-associated infections (HAIs) a complex task. The aim of this article is to highlight how ethnography can assist in understanding contextual factors that support or hinder the implementation of evidence-based practices for reducing HAIs. METHODS We conducted a review of ethnographic studies specificall...

For almost 20 years, occupational therapists have advocated client-centered practice. Yet client-centered practice is fraught with tensions that arise outside the practice of individual occupational therapists. This paper is guided by two questions: What produces professional tensions in client-centered practice? and What understanding and change might be generated using institutional ethnograp...

her 50s, spent a year working low-wage jobs as a waitress in Florida, a housecleaner in Maine and a Wal-Mart sales clerk in Minnesota. Her detailed ethnography, the best-selling Nickel and Dimed, reveals how physically demanding and personally demeaning these jobs are, and how workers are trapped in them. Ehrenreich’s book has received wide critical acclaim, a typical book review in the Minneap...

Thisarticle describes critical design ethnography, an ethnographic process in­ volvingparticipatory design workaimed at transforming a local contextwhile producing an instructional design that can beused in multiplecontexts. Here, we reflect on the opportunities and challenges that emerged as we built local critiques thenreified them intoadesignedartifact thathasbeen implemented in classrooms a...

Sociologists understand the term ‘organization’ in very broad terms to mean any structure by which social life and behaviour are managed. The term is more narrowly understood to mean formal organizations with a bureaucratic structure. Some formal organizations process ‘clients’, like schools and police stations, where the principal purpose is the management of people and their needs. Others are...

98 Introduction Collectively qualitative research is a group of methodologies, with each approach offering a different lens though which to explore, understand, interpret or explain phenomena in real word contexts and settings. This article will provide an overview of one of the many qualitative approaches, ethnography, and its relevance to healthcare. We will use an exemplar based on a study t...