ABSTRACT

This chapter provides the idea of public ethnography as a strategic genre of scholarly communication. Multiple publics do exist, and strategic ethnographic communication must therefore be differentiated and strategically crafted to reach the intended segments of a specific audience. These strategies of differentiation may include a purposive selection of various modes of expression, engagement tactics, channels of communication, and dissemination techniques that are considered ideal for a target audience that is a subset of the "general public." It is important to clarify that a public ethnography must draw the attention of a non-academic public, but the doing of public ethnography does not exclude traditional dissemination through academic media. Public ethnographers who want to be employed in the modern university must be prepared to speak to both academic and non-academic audiences. Ethnographers interested in connecting with non-academic audiences have at least two ways of achieving their goals: by way of mediation and by way of collaboration.