Ethnographic Methods Utilized By Finkelstein In With No...

With No Direction Home: Homeless Youth on the Road and in the Streets is an ethnography which describes the lives of youths living on the streets of New York City. The author attempts to conduct her own research in order to dispute the false impressions that many previous researches have formed about the youths living on the street. The ethnographic method she uses aids her study of the â€Å"street kids† in acknowledging the facts behind their choice of lifestyle and their experiences while on the street. Marni Finklestein received her PhD in Anthropology from the New School of Social Research in New York City. She has also managed to organize many other studies based on drugs and substance abuse as well as sexual assaults in the streets of†¦show more content†¦Malinowski and Finklestein used similar concepts in their field study to acknowledge the depth of their study rather than using the â€Å"armchair approach† (12, 2014). Moreover the ethnographic methods used by Finklestein in approaching the youth of New York are also displayed in Kristina E. Gibson’s’ Street Kids: Homeless Youth, Outreach, and Policing New York’s Streets. Both being women researchers, their approaches were similar in wanting to seek the emotional perspective on the youth’s lives and experiences. Despite that both are women, Gibson uses a more feministic perspective in her ethnographic approach and she spends a longer duration of time in her study than Finklestein (2011, Gibson). Marni Finklestein uses methods such as interviewing and approaching the youth as a professional researcher, on the other hand, Kristina E. Gibson uses the methods of volunteering as a â€Å"street outreach†(2011, Gibson) worker. Gibson created her analysis based on the human geography, whereas Finklestein based her study on the basis of Anthropology. Although they both conducted their study by approaching the street kids of New York City, the concepts an d the reasons for their research are different. Finklestein wants to provide information, about how the youths got on the street and what their