Ethnography must be seen as a full theoretical system, not just as a method. In this book, a range of authors are examined, whose work was either instrumental in creating this theoretical system, or might productively be used in developing it further. Authors discussed include Hymes, Scollon, Kress, Bourdieu, Bakhtin and Lefebvre.

Jan Blommaert is Professor in the Department of Culture Studies and Director of Babylon, Center for the Study of Superdiversity at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. He is the author of The Sociolinguistics of Globalization (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity (Multilingual Matters, 2013).

Jan Blommaert is Professor in the Department of Culture Studies and Director of Babylon, Center for the Study of Superdiversity at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. He is the author of The Sociolinguistics of Globalization (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity (Multilingual Matters, 2013).

Dialogue lies at the heart of Jan Blommaert’s invitation to conceive of ethnography as epistemology. In this elegant collection Blommaert enters into intriguing dialogues with a number of foundational thinkers in ethnography and sociolinguistics. In engaging with the ‘classics’ as he calls them, he lays out his challenging vision of a sociolinguistics that takes inequality and voice as central problematics. This is scholarship at its best.

Once again, Jan Blommaert advances the field of sociolinguistics in this indispensable collection of insightful and thought-provoking essays on the importance of ethnography in helping us make sense of language, culture, and society in our complex and fascinating world. Written in a clear and accessible style, this book will become essential reading for its intellectual rigor, scope and depth.