Speaking truth about power
In Political Ethnography, the authors advance the claim that
ethnography is not only sufficient for examining political phenomena,
it is necessary. A critical reason for this is that ethnography allows
us to capture the story of people at the margins, relating realities
as experienced by the relatively less powerful as opposed to the
political elites. Ethnographers tend to immerse themselves in the
worlds of the excluded and underrepresented, and from that vantage
point offer a very different story from the "official" one that might
be gleaned from the documents, records, statements, etc generated from
formal institutions and their actors. It seems to me there is a
certain tendency to embrace both humility and complexity in this
approach: humility in so far as one has to acknowledge the value of
the experiences and perspectives of those individuals who are often
discredited in society (an ethnographer might take the word of the
town drunk over the town mayor), and complexity in that the
ethnographer is focused on the nuances, on the details, on the
subtleties that tell the story behind the story.
But how do these values fare in the market of ideas? Embracing such
ideals, does the ethnographer end up ceding ground to those who
arrogantly subdivide the world into simple arguments and advance those
as truth with a capital T? Allina-Pisano observes, "Because those who
study political elites often cleave to epistemologies that admit to
ontological truth, their research findings are articulated as truth
claims about the world. In contrast, the ethnographic tradition of
studying people at societies' margins, of examining the politics of
the subaltern, most comfortable embraces interpretive approaches to
knowledge." (p. 56). Consequently, do these power imbalances then get
reflected and reproduced in the academic world, where the voices of
those who study political elites are more powerful, and thus the story
of those elites prevails? Is an "epistemology that admits to
ontological truth" inconsistent with the world view that motivates an
ethnographic approach to research? Allina-Pisano says no. Wedeen, for example, tends
toward yes. What do we think?
ethnography is not only sufficient for examining political phenomena,
it is necessary. A critical reason for this is that ethnography allows
us to capture the story of people at the margins, relating realities
as experienced by the relatively less powerful as opposed to the
political elites. Ethnographers tend to immerse themselves in the
worlds of the excluded and underrepresented, and from that vantage
point offer a very different story from the "official" one that might
be gleaned from the documents, records, statements, etc generated from
formal institutions and their actors. It seems to me there is a
certain tendency to embrace both humility and complexity in this
approach: humility in so far as one has to acknowledge the value of
the experiences and perspectives of those individuals who are often
discredited in society (an ethnographer might take the word of the
town drunk over the town mayor), and complexity in that the
ethnographer is focused on the nuances, on the details, on the
subtleties that tell the story behind the story.
But how do these values fare in the market of ideas? Embracing such
ideals, does the ethnographer end up ceding ground to those who
arrogantly subdivide the world into simple arguments and advance those
as truth with a capital T? Allina-Pisano observes, "Because those who
study political elites often cleave to epistemologies that admit to
ontological truth, their research findings are articulated as truth
claims about the world. In contrast, the ethnographic tradition of
studying people at societies' margins, of examining the politics of
the subaltern, most comfortable embraces interpretive approaches to
knowledge." (p. 56). Consequently, do these power imbalances then get
reflected and reproduced in the academic world, where the voices of
those who study political elites are more powerful, and thus the story
of those elites prevails? Is an "epistemology that admits to
ontological truth" inconsistent with the world view that motivates an
ethnographic approach to research? Allina-Pisano says no. Wedeen, for example, tends
toward yes. What do we think?
posted by Annie at 10:41 PM
2 Comments:
I like that you brought up the question of ontological truth, because that was one of my primary questions after finishing the book. How can ANY researcher, employing ethnographic methods or otherwise, claim to have found truth? Is "good" scholarship an exercise in arrogance?
You phrase your question as an ethnographic versus positivist dichotomy. If the ethnographic scholar, who is reflexive and acknowledges the agency that the researcher brings to the research, concedes that the "truth" they present is subjective, does the positivist (for lack of a better label) "win"?
First of all, I think the ethnographer would say that the world will speak for itself. Zirakzadeh would hold that eventually, scholars that offer sweeping causal hypotheses will be proven wrong.
My follow-up question would be this: if this idea of scholarship having an expiration date is borne out (as it has been proven to be), then does it make ethnography MORE efficacious than positivist in delivering on its promises? Or, on the other hand, is ethnography too cautious, and not bold enough to make broad statements about truth?
I'm looking forward to our discussion, but ultimately I am pretty sure I'm going to end up siding with Bayard de Volo, who holds that we need to be defined by our subject rather than by our method (217).
You both raise very good (and provocative) points. I'd like to focus on one aspect, namely, who is being studied? Why is it that ethnography focuses on populations at the margins and not political elites? Could there be an ethnographic study of the White House? Of course researchers could probably not gain access, but can we consider "kiss and tell" memoirs of former staffers a kind of ethnography? If not, why not? What distinguishes ethnography from a kiss-and-tell memoir? And do ethnographers study those at the margins, those without power, in part because they are more accessible?
It is my impression (perhaps a false impression) that ethnographies often focus on "The Other," and that the determination of who counts as "The Other" says more about the ethnographer than the person being studied. Really: would any cocktail waitress bother to conduct an ethnography of cocktail waitresses to figure out how they feel about their uniforms, only to find that what they really care about are tips? And would any university press be interested in an ethnography of faculty meetings, even though such an ethnography of such exotic subjects might be fascinating to Xerox technicians? My point: I am drawing attention to the politics of who studies whom.
P.S. My apologies that this post is late. I was prepping for and taking comps last week.
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