Rose makes a passionate plea to break down the corporate mould of ethnography and reshape it as a democratic form of thinking and being. He links the origins of ethnography with the travel journals left by colonizing European traders, merchants and soldiers, then shows to what extent modern ethnography, centred on corporate organized universities, has adopted this imperial philosophy and structure. By breaking away from this model he offers an alternative which is concerned with its subject and which links the life of the ethnographer to the ethnography. Through the use of poem, story and epigraph as well as scholarly analysis, Rose opens up the window on the possibility of ethnography as a way of life.