Ethnography’s Expanding Warrants

Abstract

Because ethnographies report what is already known in some part of society, the warrant for the method is uniquely double. Each ethnography promises both positive and negative knowledge, a contribution to understanding the social logic that organizes some area of social life and a contribution to the sociology of ignorance. Those reported in this volume illustrate seven distinct warrants that hinge on morally charged forces blocking the dissemination of knowledge about locally known social realities. In addition, running through many of the studies is a focus on an amoral warrant. Ethnographies are distinctively suited for studying the ubiquitous, naturally occurring hiding that is necessarily part of social expression, or how things are hidden in the foundations of the social world.