I am an ethnographer - some-body who engages in studies of people at firsthand," says sociologist Mitch Duneier. "My main method is participant observation: I participate in the social worlds of the people I write about."

Such study has resulted in two books so far. Slim's Table, an account of working-class African-American men who congregate in a cafeteria on the south side of Chicago, was published in 1992. Sidewalk, for which Duneier worked as a street vendor in order to understand the survival strategies of homeless street people, was published this past summer. He is currently writing a book about work and personality in the lives of the working poor, based on three years at a night shift job with poor workers.

Duneier is also a committed teacher. "In my classes on firsthand observation, I try to communicate my passion for the potential of these systematic methods to help us develop deeper sympathetic and critical understandings of society."