Political Ethnography: Method, Sensibility, Writing

Political ethnography is a broad, interdisciplinary research strategy that seeks to generate contextual knowledge about social and political worlds based on the immersion of the researcher into those worlds. Researchers working in an ‘ethnographic key’ (Longo & Zacka 2019) commit themselves to ‘being there’ and ‘getting close’ to everyday mess and mundanity to put the ‘life’ back into everyday life and the ‘social’ back into social science. As a mode of analysis, ethnography eschews unitary and one-sided interpretations, and its goal is often to complexify rather than to simplify existing arguments and assumptions. As a scholarly practice, ‘ethnography’ can stand for many things: a method, an attitude, a written record, a feeling, a tool, and a thing. Definitions range from calling ethnography a ‘way of seeing’ (Wolcott 2008), a ‘writing genre’ (Clifford & Marcus 1986), or a ‘practice of representing’ (van Maanen 1988 [2011]); to describing it as a form of research ‘from the body’ (Wacquant 2015), and ‘the most human of [all] methods’ (Yanow & Schwartz-Shea 2018).

Over the last years, ethnographic methods have become increasingly popular in political science and international relations, where they are used to study international relations, politics, and power ‘from within’ and ‘from below’. Yet, ethnography’s place and role in our discipline remains contested. While some embrace ethnographic ways of seeing and its promise to bring the lived experience of real people back into our analyses, others criticize ethnography for its naïve empiricism, ethical dilemmas and, apparent inability to produce generalizable insights.

This short course will provide you with a space to learn about and experiment with what it means to study politics and power ethnographically.

Course Structure

The course is structured as a seminar involving three components:

1. Insights and overview of relevant debates and literature from the lecturer.
2. Application of content of the course to your own research plans and projects and group discussion thereof.
3. Practical methodological and writing exercises.

Each course day will blend these three components, with short breaks in between individual sessions.

We will make extensive use of the chapters in:

• Edward Schatz’s edited volume (2009) Political Ethnography: What Immersion Contributes to the Study of Power (London and Chicago: University of Chicago Press)
• Timothy Pachirat’s (2018) Among Wolves: Ethnography as the Immersive Study of Power (London and New York: Routledge)
• Richard Fenno’s (1990) Watching Politicians: Essays on Participant Observation (University of California, Berkeley)
• Alice Goffman’s (2014) On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press)

References

• Clifford, J. and Marcus, G. E. (1986) Writing Culture. Edited by J. Clifford and G. E. Marcus. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. doi: 10.1525/rep.2014.126.1.1.1.
• Longo, M. and Zacka, B. (2019) ‘Political Theory in an Ethnographic Key’, American Political Science Review, 113(4), pp. 1066–1070. doi: 10.1017/S0003055419000431.
• Tsing, A. L. (2015) The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• van Maanen, J. (2011) Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Wacquant, Loïc. 2015. “For a Sociology of Flesh and Blood.” Qualitative Sociology 38 (1): 1–11.
• Wolcott, Harry F. 2008. “Ethnography as a Way of Seeing.” In Ethnography: A Way of Seeing, Chapter 4: 62–87. AltaMira Press.
• Yanow, D. and Schwartz-Shea, P. (2018) ‘Serie’s Editors Foreword’, in Yanow, D. and Schwartz-Shea, P. (eds) Timothy Pachirat: Among Wolves: Ethnography and the Immersive Study of Power. London and New York: Routledge.

How the course will work online

Live classes will be held daily for three hours on Zoom, allowing you to interact with both the instructor and other participants in real-time.

Over the duration of the course, it will be possible to have one-on-one consultations with your instructor, which will offer an additional opportunity for feedback and guidance on your research project.

You do not need to have prerequisite knowledge to attend this course, but a few things are worth noting:

1. The course is intensive in both reading and practice and requires considerable engagement from participants. It is conceived with the intent of collectively exploring what ethnographic research into politics and power looks like – in theory and in practice. Readings should be completed ahead of sessions and participants need to be willing to put in extra time for the observation and writing exercises. Like any method, ethnography can only be learnt by being done.

2. The course may be especially relevant for students working on a research project that involves, either, fieldwork, or another kind of interpretive engagement with primary data sources. However, anyone interested in the epistemological, political and ethical implications of studying power through immersion and close empirical observation is most welcome to enrol.

Disclaimer

This course description may be subject to subsequent adaptations (e.g. taking into account new developments in the field, participant demands, group size, etc.). Registered participants will be informed at the time of change.

By registering for this course, you confirm that you possess the knowledge required to follow it. The instructor will not teach these prerequisite items. If in doubt, please contact us before registering.