ABSTRACT
This chapter develops critical ethnography as a methodological approach to advance social justice. I use narratives and engagements with a group of individuals facing unsheltered homelessness in the margins of an urban public park to consider how ethnography can support people’s aspirations for a better life. Methodologically, I focus on data collection techniques of participant observation, ethnographic interviews, semistructured interviews, and photography. Analytically, I discuss the use of field notes, ethnographic data transformation, and discourse analysis to critically situate my ethnographic experiences. I then challenge traditional ethnographies to advance from describing a culture of interest to proactively working with communities of interest to advance their material and symbolic efforts toward challenging empowered structures and institutions. I conclude the chapter by discussing the role of ethnographies in both challenging and reinscribing narratives of marginalization and trenchant researcher-subject positionalities. Critical ethnographies contribute to the ongoing discourse of qualitative research practices, approaches, discourses, epistemologies, and ideologies that can be both challenging and emancipatory in their outcomes.
