| Abstract: | In this paper it is argued that the proliferation of ethnographic genres is the result of deliberate textual inventions by postmodernists, on the one hand, and a natural consequence of the method of participant‐observation by experiential ethnographers, on the other. This implies that experimental and experiential ethnographies are distinct approaches to doing and writing fieldwork and culture. Consequently, experiential ethnographies have to be reclaimed from the textualist lock‐in to which some experimental ethnographers have led the discipline. Distinguishing between the two types of ethnographies invites us also to puzzle about the role of rhetoric, empathy, and the dangers and uses of experimental and experiential ethnographies. |
