Billy Ehn is professor emeritus of ethnology at Umeå University in Sweden. He is co-author, with Orvar Löfgren, of The Secret World of Doing Nothing. Orvar Löfgren is professor emeritus of ethnology at Lund University in Sweden. His publications include On Holiday: A History of Vacationing. Richard Wilk is Provost's Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University. His publications include Fast Food/Slow Food and Economies and Cultures (second edition, with Lisa Cliggett.) Richard Wilk and Orvar Löfgren, together with Jessica Chelakis, are co-editors of The Anthropology of Everyday Life, a Rowman & Littlefield series.

1-Hidden Worlds
Finding the tools
From idea to finished product
The need for a cultural perspective
Analytical strategies
Structure of the book
2-The importance of small things
The first step: getting going
The second step: searching for literature
The third step: collecting material
The fourth step: the analysis
The fifth step: writing
3-Making the familiar strange
Making a first attempt
Looking for entrances
To avoid the predictable
Choosing methodological entrances
New questions and surprising answers
Return to the past
A life-history perspective
The strange home
The home as an art installation
The importance of details and activities
The advantages of limitation
4-Sharing a meal
Table manners
The hidden world of the dinner table
Forming a family meal
Power at the table
Class and family history
Doing mealtime ethnography
Meals as models
5-Do you remember Facebook?
Exploring media in everyday life
Beginning at the end
Analog and digital living
Media taking place
Virtual intimacy
Are you there?
Follow the Objects
6-Catching a mood
Locating the setting
Analytical approaches
Touring the senses
The station as a sensorium
Changing moods
Describing atmospheres
Intimate moods
Changing tracks
Sensing the World
7-Crafting wood and words
Ethnographic writing
Making things with words
Autoethnographic writing
Describing non-verbal experience
Do it by feel
Writing DIY: three versions
Manual
Story
Analysis
Working knowledge
The importance of failures
Working and Writing
8-Demystifying fieldwork
The classic style
Making changes to the classic mold
The jungle ideal
Where is the field now?
Organizing information
Past, present, future
9-Taking cultural analysis out into the world
The surprise effect
Open fieldwork
What's this thing about culture?
A double cultural analysis
Learning to communicate
Time discipline and teamwork
Three ways of surprising a client
So what?
The critical edge
References