ABSTRACT

Rebecca De Holmes is launching an accusation of plagiarism with the opening paragraph I have just quoted. Her list of the ingredients which make up a bestseller is too exotic for most educational ethnographers to contemplate, but it captures the main theme of this chapter. How does an author-especially a novice-produce texts which are both interesting enough to ‘pass’ and yet are also authentic? As the chapter title suggests, there are two main reasons for writing: glory or gain. To achieve either glory or gain the author has to arouse the interest of readers and convince them of the realism, truth or authenticity of the account. There is a rapidly expanding literature on how social scientists establish the authenticity of their accounts (see Atkinson, 1990), but that work has not been summarized here. The emphasis in this chapter is more practical: on organizing the production of different kinds of output. However, all potential authors of ethnographic monographs, theses or articles must recognize that their ‘writing up’ is part of the same reflexive process that has carried them from the planning stage through the fieldwork and the analysis. As Nigel Barley (1983:34-5) has argued:

By the very act of writing the standard monograph on any people, he presents them with an image of themselves that must be coloured by his own prejudices and preconceptions since there is no objective reality about an alien people.