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1. Introduction : ethnography as practice -- 2. Where to begin -- 3. Ethical ethnography -- 4. Participating and observing -- 5. Interviews : asking questions of individuals and groups -- 6. Practical issues in interviewing -- 7. New directions in ethnography -- 8. Ethnographic analysis -- 9. Writing and representation.

According to the people of the Mueda plateau in northern Mozambique, sorcerers remake the world by asserting the authority of their own imaginative visions of it. While conducting research among these Muedans, anthropologist Harry G. West made a revealing discovery-for many of them, West's efforts to elaborate an ethnographic vision of their world was itself a form of sorcery. In Ethnographic Sorcery, West explores the fascinating issues provoked by this equation.A key theme of West's research into sorcery is that one sorcerer's claims can be challenged or reversed by other sorcerers. After We

Ethnography is a methodology with more than one hundred years of history. It arose in the Western world as a particular form of knowledge about distant cultures (typically non-Western ones) which were impenetrable to analysis consisting only of fleeting contact or brief conversations. After having entered several disciplines of social sciences (anthropology, sociology and psychology), in recent times ethnography has become an important tool in political science as well (where it takes the name of political ethnography) as part of interpretive methodologies and research.

Trust occupies a unique place in contemporary discourse. Seen as both necessary and good, it is variously depicted as enhancing the social fabric, lowering crime rates, increasing happiness, and generating prosperity. It allows for complex political systems, permits human communication, underpins financial instruments and economic institutions, and holds society itself together. There is scant space within this vision for a nuanced discussion of mistrust. With few exceptions, it is treated as little more than a corrosive absence. This monograph, instead, proposes an ethnographic and conceptual exploration of mistrust as a legitimate epistemological stance in its own right. It examines the impact of mistrust on practices of conversation and communication, friendship and society, as well as politics and cooperation, and suggests that suspicion, doubt, and uncertainty can also ground ways of organizing human society and cooperating with others.