Interest in the lived mundane practices and embodied experience of subjects has seen a tremendous upsurge in human geography in the past years. With its focus on social interaction and concern with subjects' lifeworlds, ethnography suggests itself as a suitable methodological approach to match this interest. Against the lack of a sustained debate in German-speaking human geography, this special issue seeks to illustrate the potential of ethnography for different conceptual approaches with the help of empirical examples. It is the task of this editorial to review key issues associated with ethnographic research. In so doing, it does not equate ethnography with the method of participant observation, but rather understands it as a methodology with specific implications for the responsibility and position of the researcher, the interpretation of the material and the construction of a narrative.