While some books present "ideal" ethnographic field methods, Inside Ethnography shares the realities of fieldwork in action. With a focus on strategies employed with populations at society's margins, twenty-one contemporary ethnographers examine their cutting-edge work with honesty and introspection, drawing readers into the field to reveal the challenges they have faced. Representing disciplinary approaches from criminology, sociology, anthropology, public health, business, and social work, and designed explicitly for courses on ethnographic and qualitative methods, crime, deviance, drugs, and urban sociology, the authors portray an evolving methodology that adapts to the conditions of the field while tackling emerging controversies with perceptive sensitivity. Their judicious advice on how to avoid pitfalls and remedy missteps provides unusual insights for practitioners, academics, and undergraduate and graduate students.

Methamphetamine (ice, speed, crystal, shard) has been called epidemic in the United States. Yet few communities were ready for increased use of methamphetamine by suburban women. Women on Ice is the first book to study exclusively the lives of women who use the drug and its effects on their families. In-depth interviews with women in the suburban counties of one of the largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. chronicle the details of their initiation into methamphetamine, the turning points into problematic drug use, and for a few, their escape from lives veering out of control. Their life course and drug careers are analyzed in relation to the intersecting influences of social roles, relationships, social/political structures, and political trends. Examining the effects of punitive drug policy, inadequate social services, and looming public health risks, including HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C, the book gives voice to women silenced by shame. Boeri introduces new and developing concepts in the field of addiction studies and proposes policy changes to more broadly implement initiatives that address the problems these women face. She asserts that if we are concerned that the war on drugs is a war on drug users, this book will alert us that it is also a war on suburban families.

While some books present "ideal" ethnographic field methods, Inside Ethnography shares the realities of fieldwork in action. With a focus on strategies employed with populations at society's margins, twenty-one contemporary ethnographers examine their cutting-edge work with honesty and introspection, drawing readers into the field to reveal the challenges they have faced. Representing disciplinary approaches from criminology, sociology, anthropology, public health, business, and social work, and designed explicitly for courses on ethnographic and qualitative methods, crime, deviance, drugs, and urban sociology, the authors portray an evolving methodology that adapts to the conditions of the field while tackling emerging controversies with perceptive sensitivity. Their judicious advice on how to avoid pitfalls and remedy missteps provides unusual insights for practitioners, academics, and undergraduate and graduate students.

Hurt: Chronicles of the Drug War Generation weaves engaging first-person accounts of the lives of baby boomer drug users, including the author Miriam Boeri's own knowledge as the sister of a heroin addict. The compelling stories are set in historical context, from the cultural influence of sex, drugs, and rock n' roll to contemporary discourse that pegs drug addiction as a disease punished by incarceration. Boeri writes with penetrating insight and conscientious attention to the intersectionality of race, gender, and class as she analyzes the impact of an increasingly punitive War on Drugs on a hurting generation.