Fieldwork has long been seen as central to anthropology as a critical source of ethnographic data and analytic insight. In the late 1970s, earlier assumptions about fieldwork method and epistemological grounding were challenged in so-called reflexive ethnographies. These ethnographies, specifically focused on the field project, were part of the general interpretive turn in American social science which itself was concurrent with the turmoil in American society in the late 1960s. This work reflects on the reflexive ethnographies, their method, intention, and claims, and situates them as incipient postmodern anthropological practice, as well as linking them to the American context of their production.

Trencher examines American intellectual, political, and economic contexts from 1960 to 1980, as reconstructed through disciplinary and professional sources in Anthropology. This cultural context is then linked to changes in American ethnographic practice. Selected works are analyzed as cultural productions, the form and content of which was permeated by and revealed characteristically American constructs for interpreting social reality.