Political ethnography : what immersion contributes to the study of power / edited by Edward Schatz ; foreword by Myron J. Aronoff.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Schatz, Edward.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Political anthropology.

Political science.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (377 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Scholars of politics have sought in recent years to make the discipline more hospitable to qualitative methods of research. Lauding the results of this effort and highlighting its potential for the future, Political Ethnography makes a compelling case for one such method in particular. Ethnography, the contributors amply demonstrate in a wide range of original essays, is uniquely suited for illuminating the study of politics. Situating these pieces within the context of developments in political science, Edward Schatz provides an overarching introduction and substantive prefaces to each of the volume's four sections. The first of these parts addresses the central ontological and epistemological issues raised by ethnographic work, while the second grapples with the reality that all research is conducted from a first-person perspective. The third section goes on to explore how ethnographic research can provide fresh perspectives on such perennial topics as opinion, causality, and power. Concluding that political ethnography can and should play a central role in the field as a whole, the final chapters illuminate the many ways in which ethnographic approaches can enhance, improve, and, in some areas, transform the study of politics.

Contents:

Introduction: Ethnographic immersion and the study of politics / Edward Schatz

Two traditions of political ethnography

Ethnography of politics: foundations, applications, prospects / Jan Kubik

How to tell an axe murderer: an essay on ethnography, truth, and lies / Jessica Allina-Pisano

Ethnography as interpretive enterprise : first-person research / Lisa Wedeen

When nationalists are not separatists: discarding and recovering academic theories while doing fieldwork in the Basque region of Spain / Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh

Ethnographic research in the shadow of civil war / Elisabeth Jean Wood

The political in political ethnography: dispatches from the kill floor / Timothy Pachirat

Ethnography's varied contributions

Scholars as citizens: studying public opinion through ethnography / Katherine Cramer Walsh

Ethnography and causality: sorcery and popular culture in the Congo / Michael G. Schatzberg

The ethnographic sensibility: overlooked authoritarian dynamics and islamic ambivalences in west Africa / Cedric Jourde

Participant-observation, politics, and power relations: Nicaraguan mothers and U.S casino waitresses / Lorraine Bayard de Volo

Placing ethnography in the discipline

Ethnography and the study of Latin American politics: an agenda for research / Enrique Desmond Arias

When you can see the sky through your roof: policy analysis from the bottom up / Corey Shdaimah, Roland Stahl, and Sanford F. Schram

Dear author, dear reader: the third hermeneutic in writing and reviewing ethnography / Dvora Yanow

Conclusion / What kind(s) of ethnography does political science need? / Edward Schatz.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780226736785

0226736784

9781283976091

1283976099

OCLC:

823040828