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Summary Political Ethnography
- Instelling
- Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)
Full summary of all classes + texts (I received a 17/20 with this summary)
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P O L I T I CA L E T H N O G R A P H YProf. Karen Büscher
10/20 written exam (mandatory readings, slides, notes) = 3 terms, 3 open q’s.
4/20 micro-teaching + its discussion report
6/20 individual paper
1. INTRODUCTION
S5: for many ethnographers, this method of participative observation is also a way to engage in the
world.
S6-13: /
S14: in its definition it’s about writing about people. Always looking at people and how they act. Not
necessarily how they experience it, because then you get in-depth interviews.
S15: /
S16: it’s not like politics in the sense that you try to understand the state. You observe it: e.g. in Ghent,
you see ethnographic sensitivities of the state in Flemish flags, the police, COVID measures, etc. finding
it in your every day, even the most abstract concepts.
So thinking about things ethnographically, is thinking how it makes itself visible in daily life.
It’s experiencing and experiencing how others experience something.
S17: ethnography as a political critique: there’s huge discussion in this, also within academic
departments, some think it doesn’t have to be, others don’t see how you cannot be political in studying
Palestine ethnographically. As is Narayan: she sees it as a way to change your perspective on the
hegemony and status quo (both from looking at the victims of oppression and those who are in power.
It’s also a written genre that you need to get used to: sometimes it digs into how the ethnographer
feels into the field, his subjective experiences, etc. different styles in it all, but often criticized for
subjectivity, however, we see that in the light that all science is subjective.
S18: video: to be a legitimate ethnographer, you need to spend a sustained time In the field, 2 weeks
is quite short.
Your presence in the field influences the field. Always need to write a part on positionality; how do you
relate to the field.
Concept of access is important: being racialized, your access might often be limited. Systems of
oppression also reproduce in this field.
Need to turn observations into a thick description.
S19: /
S20: /
S21: originally, ethnography was often used to study the ultimate other, a form of emerging, to go
native. This is quite questionable and theoretically impossible. Today, there’s more native ethnography:
study the group that you’re part of.
S22: example of white privileged professor who heroically finds himself in dangerous situations is what
the field used to be when the professor grew up, fortunately this is changing a lot today, but even then,
you had groundbreaking works from ethnography from within, like a black professor in a fully white
anthropology department.
,Laurence Ralph on his book Renegade Dreams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvc__u81Dec .
Anthropology can be done close to you. His study changes your view on many hegemonic images and
stereotypes. That gangs don’t heroically either die or end up on prison, but statistically much more
often end up in a wheelchair: half their body dead, imprisoned in the chair. But even further than the
numerous physical injuries, the mental destruction that comes with living in that milieu is devastating.
S23: /S24: /
S25: The Everyday: needs to be on EVERY exam, it makes the difference between classical politic science
and political ethnography: it is studying politics from below, from the everyday, the bottom-up.
S26-29: /
2. THE HISTORIES OF POLTICAL ETHNOGRAPHY
S1: Ethnography is a method, used in all sorts of disciplines (e.g. popular today in economy, politics) but
it originates from a specific scientific discipline: anthropology.
This class is really important for exam!
S2: Anthropology falls under the humanities: originally studying culture, but now also much broader
economy and politics, human behavior… It’s about studying people and how they live in their
surroundings.
There’s no anthropology without field work, it requires being with the people that you study.
S3:
- Its link to archeology: when they wanted to retrace older civilizations, there was the
collaboration with archeologists who study the material, and anthropologists the symbols, etc.
- Its link to colonialism: anthropology emerged with the political project of colonialism,
imperialism and development. Anthropology was a key discipline enabling and building on the
infrastructure of colonialism.
So, the study originates from the idea, that to understand yourself, you need to know the ultimate
other. You need to know contexts, processes of something as far away as yourself to understand
yourself.
Due to these origins, the study has an obsession with positionality and being self-reflective. You need
to try to filter the influence of your presence.
Video: mockumentary on black university studying the Austrian Alps.
- How everything is exoticized
- There seems to be an urge to go into a community and find ground-breaking insights. As if they
can’t bring out that information themselves, it has to be taken from them and interpreted for
them. And are there really groundbreaking divisions?
- The idea that you have to go to spaces that are explicitly rural, different, Other. What about
cities, where there might be much more similarities?
- Need of brokers: assistants, collaborators, people that give you access and help you in the field.
And the unsound expectation that these people are waiting for you to come there, that they
will embrace you, that they have time for it, that it is even advantageous for them.
S4: in trying to reconstruct the historical origins of something, there’s always the canon:
Malinowski: is often seen as the founding father of anthropology
, Last year exam q; compare old school to contemporary anthropology and compare methods, fields &
positionality. Someone compared Malinowski to a fictious current Palinowski.
Yet, there are many authors who weren’t part of the hegemonic academic world, yet their works were
intrinsically ethnographic and written way before that.
E.g. Zola Hurston: black female anthropologist who wrote about one of the last transported slaves.
Many assert that she should be part of the canon, since her booked showed what that method is all
about. However, she was never recognized as such.
The article on Hurston: her book also wasn’t recognized because she left all Kossula’s dialect in there,
in the belief that it you would otherwise lose part of his authenticity and agency.
Kossula’s lived experiences showed that there was no universal blackness, but more an inconsistency
and diversity and that: he was as discriminated by black American-born people.
S5: Anthropology started in 19thC US, UK and French universities before it spread all over the world. Its
epistemological roots: evolutionism. Its roots were to understand that.
There was huge political interest in discovery, understanding, studying in order to conquer, dominate,
and lead.
E.g. this is one of those first anthropological works, numerous are written on ‘The Savage’. People went
there to study a certain place, the habitat, oral histories, behaviors, animals, etc.
S6: ‘civilized’ societies studied by sociologists, ‘savage’ societies studied by anthropologists. That are
the discipline’s roots.
It was informed by orientalism and essentializing cultures. Anthropology was informed by the idea that
there’s savages out there to be studied, but in the end, they also participated to the idea that there is
a savage and its construction.
It became only really institutionalized in the 20thC.
S7: anthropologists could only work through the system of imperialism and globalization, yet it were
these systems that were threatening them with ‘extinction’. Many wanted to preserve their culture and
protect them from globalization, yet it was colonization that was killing them. Because, they had to
work through existing, operating frameworks within this system to find access, brokers, etc. They
couldn’t just fly and enter a community somewhere. So colonial infrastructure and administration
provided those logistics and access.
The colonizers needed anthropologists: to control people on an enormous piece of land, demands you
to work ‘with’ people, to govern them. There was a huge demand from local administrations. E.g.
colonial governments would actively recruit in academia.
There’s direct rule in which the traditional chiefs are murdered and replaced. But when they didn’t have
that capacity, it often went through indirect rule: they needed to collaborate with local chiefs. In order
to do that, needed to know what made them respected and legitimate to rule over their people.
Colonialism & anthropology were a dialogue, one could not live without the other. Though, the
knowledge production of the GS was for the Global North, for their universities etc.
S8: Here are (debatable) key figures:
Malinowski (1884-1942): accidentally did a long-term participatory observation. The books he wrote on
this experience, became the standard guide books on how to do field work. He was inspired by
functionalism: e.g. key question: in place without police, how are people punished. I.e. what’s the
function of those Kuala Rings? This was all crucial to understand how those societies functioned and
how westerners could govern them. How can authority be respected there without the same penal
system.
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