James Spradley

James Spradley

James P. Spradley was a professor of Anthropology at Macalester College from 1969 and is well known for his additions to the literature on ethnography and qualitative research. He died of leukemia at the age of 48 in 1982. Spradley was extraordinarily prolific and wrote or edited 20 books in 12 years.

Among these, the most well known are his books Participant Observation and The Ethnographic Interview (1979, Wadsworth Thomson Learning). In The Ethnographic Interview, Spradley describes 12 steps for developing an ethnographic study using ethnosemantics. This book followed his 1972 textbook (with David W. McCurdy) The Cultural Experience: Ethnography in Complex Society. A good example of Spradley's ethnographic interviewing technique can be seen in his ethnography "You Owe Yourself a Drunk: An Ethnography of Urban Nomads."