Introduction: ghosts, ancestors and ethnography

Whitaker, Emilie Morwenna and Atkinson, Paul ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7367-8160 2026. Introduction: ghosts, ancestors and ethnography. Whitaker, Emilie Morwenna and Atkinson, Paul, eds. Ethnography’s ghosts: spectres, archives, ancestors, Routledge, pp. 1-9. (10.4324/9781003541424-1)

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

This introduction outlines the overall rationale of the collection. In referring to Ethnography's Ghosts, the editors and authors are not engaged in a ‘literal’ reading of ghosts, hauntings, and similarly spectral kinds of apparition. Rather, the volume reflects the degree to which ethnographers might revisit their own earlier fieldwork, and in doing so may evoke the ‘ghosts’ of who and what they encountered, and the ghosts of their own past selves. Such imaginative reflections and recollections are rendered possible because ethnographic researchers – anthropologists, sociologists, and others – are curators of their own archives. Such memorabilia include notebooks, photographs, videos, and material artefacts. They are always supplemented by recollections, headnotes that amplify fieldnotes, or sensations that trigger associations with persons, places, and occasions. In tracing such relations with the past and present, authors may also reflect on their own academic ‘ancestors’: significant figures who exercise a lasting influence.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Publisher:	Routledge
ISBN:	9781032891491
Last Modified:	13 Jul 2026 14:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/188176

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item