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There was a brief discussion on this list about 2 1/2 years ago when Alice Goffman’s book *On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City* came out. As much as I admired some aspects of her work, it had serious flaws centered around, to put it politely, Goffman’s lack of obsession with factual truth. I was mostly disturbed by the number of prominent anthropologists who defended the worst aspects of the book and her related statements, and who generally dismissed the idea that accuracy in describing the world was important. 

While most reviews of the book and Goffman’s related TED talk were completely positive, some were not. Perhaps her most outspoken critic was Northwestern University law professor Steven Lubet. Lubet was disturbed enough that he embarked on a major exploration of the relationship between ethnography and evidence. Coming from a law background, he largely compared the way evidence is presented in court and the way evidence is presented by ethnographers. The result is a new book from Oxford Press called *Interrogating Ethnography: why evidence matters*. I just finished it. It is worth the time of anyone interested in the ethics of truth telling.


Gunnar

Gunnar Swanson
East Carolina University 
graphic design program

http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm
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Gunnar Swanson Design Office
1901 East 6th Street
Greenville NC 27858
USA

http://www.gunnarswanson.com
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+1 252 258-7006


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