This paper aims at exploring how the knowledge on organizations can be constructed through the ethnographic method. The focus of this work is the backstage of an ethnographic research, the process through which the choices, the insertion and the farewell of the research field were made. Intertwined with the description of the processes, the experiences of strangeness, familiarity and deconstruction of the researcher are also presented. The trajectory of one of the authors of this paper is included in the work in order to help other researchers, who choose to use the ethnographic method in Management studies, to understand the investigative process step by step. In addition to that, this paper also presents the analysis of the importance of considering the body of the researched and researcher as a subject that creates knowledge for the thematic or organizational culture.
ethnography; organizational culture; body; embodiment; bookstore; shopping mall