PROMISED LAND

H. L.Goodall, Jr. (1989). Casing a Promised Land: 

                                        The Autobiography of an Organizational                                                Detective as Cultural Ethnographer.

Goodall was a professor of Communication. This is the first of his trilogy of books...the other two books are Living in the Rock n' Roll Mystery, and Divine Signs. I read and took notes on Casing a Promised Land in May of 2003--20 years ago, and now (2023) i'm reading and documenting the best of the "best parts."

Some of the many gems:

1)Academics need to get out of the office and into the world to hear stories, to become detectives, to listen by climbing into ears and moving into the bloodstream of the people they hope to understand...they need to look for clues, go undercover, interview key informants. 

2)In systems, EVERYTHING COUNTS...thus, the academic detective needs to attend to detail, looking for both the overall scene and the specific action.

3)Academics tend to study their own problems...an interpretive ethnographer tries to come at the "problem" by hanging out with people in the environment where the real life problem exists, participating in the situation as much as possible, and, in the spirit of the first two items above, recording all of it.

4)For writers: writes what's real for you, make it accessible to your readers so that they can make use of it.

5)The best reason to write is for truth and beauty, not for profit, fame, or prestige.

You don't have to be an academic to appreciate the advice--we are attentive to ideas that speak to our felt problems/needs, we can become like detectives looking for clues, and in this search, everything counts, but let us not forget the container, the scene, as well as the action at hand...let our search and writing and speaking be for truth and beauty above all else.