I believe that Communication is a transdisciplinary field of study, which means that Communication theories, methods, activities, and practices shape and inform all other disciplines and subjects. Ours is an infinitely complex field of study because communication between and among people is an always evolving symbolic phenomenon. One reason I selected Communication as a field of study is that it is sufficiently complex to embrace a lifetime of inquiry. As the philosopher Georges Gudorf once put it, "Communication calls the world into being."

I am also a narrative ethnographer. I use qualitative methods-deep immersion in cultures, participant-observation, interviews, writing fieldnotes, and mining rhetorical and narrative data from historical archives-to construct personal accounts of the intersections of communication and cultures. The purpose of my research is to teach others through diverse cultural examples how they may choose to live.

I am very taken with this book and am well aware that I will be rereading it again shortly. I know I haven't pulled all the wisdom out of it yet, maybe I never will. This slim volume is packed with perspective on writing "new" ethnography.

By new ethnography, I mean creative narratives shaped out of a writer's personal experiences within a culture and addressed to academic and public audiences.

For the last couple of years I have made a point of attending the National Communication Association (NCA) Ethnographic Division Pre-Conference to soak up what Goodall and other great ethnographers like Nick Trujillo, and Robin P. Clair, to name a few, have to share from their experience writing ethnographic works. I plan on continuing this practice. In short a day with these folks is well worth the cost of the trip to NCA and I plan on making the trip to San Antonio later this year, primarily for the pre-conference.

If you are interested in ethnography either old or new I strongly recommend you read this book. Decide to use it or decide against it, but either way there is very valuable information inside it. Goodall explains the goals of the book as:

Four tasks are involved in learning how to become an ethnographer:

You have to learn how to do fieldwork.

You have to learn how to write.

You have to learn who you are as a fieldworker, as a writer, and as a self.

An you have to learn how - and where - those activities are meaningfully connected.

In sum, these four tasks are what this book is about.

I should note that Goodall's book is part of AltaMira's Ethnographic Alternative Book Series which also includes Markham, Annette M. (1998). Life Online: Researching Real Experience in Virtual Space. Walnut Creek CA: AltaMira Press