Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : exercises in reflexivity : situating theory in practice / Antony Puddephatt, William Shaffir and Steven Kleinknecht -- Learning how to speak of sadness / David A. Karp -- Recollecting good and bad days / Kathy Charmaz -- Colorful writing : conducting and living with a tattoo ethnography / Clinton R. Sanders -- Improvising on sensitizing concepts / Robert R. Faulkner -- On developing and using concepts in an Icelandic field-research setting / Will C. Van Den Hoonaard -- Behind the conceptual scene of Student life and exams / Daniel Albas and Cheryl Albas -- How Murray Manor became an ethnography / Jaber F. Gubrium -- Habitus as topic and tool : reflections on becoming a prizefighter / Loïc Wacquant -- Researching alcoholics and alcoholism in American society / Norman K. Denzin -- The development of leisure theory in three nature-challenge hobbies / Robert A. Stebbins -- Telling tales about how concepts develop : stories from ethnographic encounters with the Moog synthesizer / Trevor Pinch -- The ethnography behind Defenders of the faith / Samuel Heilman -- On piecing the puzzle : researching Hassidic Jews / William Shaffir -- Using a gestalt perspective to analyze children's worlds / Patricia A. Adler and Peter Adler -- Hookers, rounders and desk clerks : encountering the reality of the hotel community / Robert Prus -- Making theories from water; or, finding stratification in competitive swimming / Daniel F. Chambliss -- Solving the mysteries of shelter work for the battered woman / Donileen R. Loseke -- The path taken : opportunity, flexibility, and reflexivity in the field / Jennifer L. Dunn -- Walking the talk : doing Gravity's shadow / Harry Collins -- Writing theory in(to) Last writes / Laurel Richardson -- Conceptualizing a profession in process : The new pediatrics revisited / Dorothy Pawluch -- The history, myth, and science of Masada : the making of an historical ethnography / Nachman Ben-Yehuda.