Encourages student ethnographers to seek topics which relate to their past experience and their hopes for future careers, and to be reflective without mistaking “navel-gazing” for ethnographic description.

Assignments build from one that is exceptionally easy, through those at an intermediate level, to one that will challenge the most gifted students.

Assignments include Small Field Assignments (Map of a Block, Private Language, Body Language, Ritual) and The Big Ethnography (Choosing a Scene, Working with Informants, Analysis and Interpretation, Writing the Paper).

Describes false leads which the author and his students have followed and from which they have learned.