Ethnography in the Performing Arts: A Student Guide provides a step-by-step guide to the processes of undertaking an ethnographic project. Krüger states that as ‘written guides and books that are intelligible to both student and non-specialists are rare’ (p. 1), her aim was to produce a practical and easy-to-understand guide to performance ethnography for use in university education; an aim she accomplishes admirably. The guide began as a joint project between Krüger's Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Sheffield, but was completed and written up by Krüger alone. In parts this means that the guide is ‘strongly informed by the specific practices at Liverpool John Moores University’ (p. 2) and, although this is not to the guide's detriment, it is perhaps somewhat biased towards the institution's praxis in that it includes the LJMU's Code of Practice for Research and its ethical approval guidelines.

Krüger's own thesis explored students' experience of the transmission of ethnomusicology at universities in the UK and Germany, with subsequent published work examining ethnomusicology pedagogy and virtual ethnography. Here she posits that ethnography – defined as both fieldwork and its subsequent analysis and interpretation – is a particularly useful option for independent study for a semester-long dissertation. She argues that it ‘enables students to feel greater ownership of their work and it changes their perspectives in often significant ways by interrogating their own relationship with a culture in which they participate’ (pp. 3–4). Krüger also claims that ethnography can lead students towards originality within more theoretical analysis, and can result in ‘positive and rewarding experiences’ and ‘transferable skills for work and life’ (p. 4). However, she also stresses the importance of using existing theory and literature and offers guidance on how to integrate the two disciplines (pp. 59–61 and pp. 119–20).

By using students' own ethnographic research and their experiences as case studies, the student guide becomes an ethnographic piece of research in itself. Demonstrated through the students' work, the guide covers a wide range of topics; from football chanting to dance in hip-hop/rap and from nightclubs to church music in Zambia. This is a laudable methodology as it shows not only the methods and potential pitfalls of ethnography, but does so using the voices of actual ethnographic researchers, most of whom are at the ‘novice’ undergraduate or postgraduate level at which the guide is aimed. The structure of the guide is also based on the process of an ethnographic research project in that it takes the reader through the processes of ethnography, namely planning, implementing, analysing and presenting an ethnographic project.

The book begins with an elementary but informative introduction to research which identifies differences in qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. It illustrates how and where ethnography fits into the empirical palette, and concludes with practical information about ethical considerations. Chapter II, ‘Approaching Ethnography’, introduces the reader to the planning processes required for an ethnographic project, highlighting issues such as time limits, health & safety and the concept of truth. This is laid out in practical ‘what-where-who-when-how’ terms, with tips on how to choose a research topic and how to write a research proposal. Chapter III deals with the methodological foundations of ethnographic research in ‘Doing Ethnography’, and explores participant-observation and informal interviewing, with advice about the best ways to document such research. The chapter concludes with some useful information about ethical conduct and data management. The final chapter deals with the presentation of the ethnographic data in ‘Writing Ethnography’, and includes advice on transcription methods, and data analysis and interpretation.

Overall, the guide is biased towards music due to the author's own background and knowledge, as music constitutes the majority of the students' ethnographies, and the other performing arts are only briefly mentioned. However, there are references to visual ethnography (pp. 94–5), ethnographic film (pp. 95–7), some advice on performance transcription methods (pp. 107–8), and recommendations as to further reading for these disciplines, and the final pages of the guide are given over to a bibliography of further reading and selected ethnographies. The coherence of the explanatory text should enable any performing arts researcher to be able to use the book, whatever their specific subject field, although music students would perhaps find it even more instructive. One criticism is that the ‘special’ chapter in-between chapters I and II, which contains the students' sample ethnographies, seemed somewhat out of place in its positioning. Whilst this chapter was instructive in establishing ethnographic methodology, style, and content for final presentation, it would perhaps have been better presented as an appendix as the case studies often contained concepts and language that had not yet been introduced; for example, the use of ‘emic’ and ‘etic’ perspectives on page 27 are not explained until page 51. There is also no index which is slightly frustrating, although the guide is well structured, relatively concise, and contains a good table of contents, so it is not too difficult to find relevant sections. One practical issue with the guide is that it is spiral bound and was already beginning to disintegrate after one reading, although the guide is available as an open access resource and is available to download and print (see above for URL).

This student guide has been designed ‘with the novice undergraduate and postgraduate fieldworker in mind [and] at educators who have little experience of ethnography in the performing arts’ (p. 4). As a one-time ethnographer in need of a ‘brush up’, the guide proved very useful as I used the methodology and advice for my own ethnographic research. Some topics in the book felt rather elementary (although perhaps not for an undergraduate), and other parts felt too advanced; for example, the section on data coding caused consternation initially. For this reason, the book can be recommended as a useful starting point for ethnographic researchers, and/or as a companion book to a taught course on ethnographic techniques, with the caveat that students should also be encouraged to read the recommended ethnographies found in the bibliography.