OUT OF MIND, OUT OF SIGHT

Every generation or so, ethnographers reiterate “the same good things,” and academic political science obliges an uncharacteristically sunny Nietzsche by experiencing them, once again, for the first time. In this sense, there is an up-side to our forgetting the contributions of people like James Scott (Reference Scott1985; Reference Scott1990), Richard Fenno (Reference Fenno1990), Lisa Wedeen (Reference Wedeen1999; Reference Wedeen2009) and of the symposium contributors who build on these foundations. If we were to teach the history of the discipline, if we were to feature a wide range of methods in our PhD courses, and if we were to take criticisms of mainstream approaches seriously, ^{Footnote 3} we would remember that political science has long had a wide range of ethnographers, as well as committed field researchers inclined in ethnographic directions, whose research continues to inspire. ^{Footnote 4}

Indeed, the language that we typically use in our discipline implies that we remember. It is normal—across research traditions—to describe our scholarship as making a “contribution” to “the literature.” Such language makes a tripartite claim: 1) that we toil not in isolation, but within communities of knowledge; 2) that our work adds to the community’s knowledge-base; and 3) that the already-valuable literature to which we contribute has well defined contours and content. Such principles seem uncontroversial.

Yet, who decides what “the literature” is and what constitutes a “contribution” thereto? The answer is complex and contested and need not preoccupy us here. ^{Footnote 5} For present purposes let us simply recall that behind any claim to provide a contribution to a literature are real people rendering real judgments with real import. These judgments come neither automatically, nor without politics. What we register as knowledge, what we collectively remember, and what we subsequently forget are matters essentially related to the sociology of our academic discipline.

Perhaps disciplinary amnesia should not surprise. Regarding the nation, Ernest Renan (1990, 11) observes, “Forgetting, I would even say historical error, is an essential factor in the creation of a nation.” I suspect the same is true of an academic discipline. For it to persist in our collective imagination as a coherent set of practices, we write out the moments that do not fit the narrative we construct for ourselves. The result is a kind of “presentism” that belies claims made about a science that cumulates.

I might go further and ask: is “forgetting” even the right word? One can only forget something that was known in the first place. In fact, our discipline is plural, publication outlets are many and proliferating quickly, and the reality is not unlike what we bemoan about the broadcast and social media: individuals too often seek out and consume material that confirms, rather than challenges, their predispositions. That we read predominantly in our own, respective traditions is of course understandable, but it should not be comforting. One can only wonder how many would-be contributions end up in the Graveyard of Good Ideas Cut Short. Never particularly well known in the first place, they could never really be forgotten. ^{Footnote 6}

Perhaps I should be sunny like Nietzsche. On reflection, I am indeed glad to be a part of a discipline that remains open to the periodic (re)discovery of ethnography’s varied contributions, but I truly would prefer that such contributions were folded into our disciplinary self-understandings, rather than forgotten or never really known.

FOLDING IN ETHNOGRAPHY’S CONTRIBUTIONS

I want to boil down four major contributions that ethnographic inquiry makes—four contributions that can inform non-ethnographic work, as well. To be clear: I would vigorously oppose any kind of methodological monism, even one rooted in a tradition I myself practice. As a strong supporter of methodological pluralism, I believe that an ethnographic sensibility offers four significant contributions to the larger discipline. ^{Footnote 7}

First, ethnographic thinking about data can refresh and refine non-ethnographic approaches to data. To an ethnographer, data quality is directly linked to two interrelated things: (a) how productive the specific encounter between researcher and researched is, and (b) what kind of access to data the researcher enjoyed. Ethnographers do not assume that neat and tidy depictions are accurate ones. Rather, they claim that data quality generally improves with close-range (typically face-to-face) contact between the researcher and the researched. ^{Footnote 8}

When presented with data that have been stripped of the specifics of particular encounters at particular times in particular places, the ethnographer wants to know more. What were the circumstances that produced these data, and not other data? Who provides major interpretations that inform them, and under what conditions does he or she provide these interpretations? The ethnographer is likewise skeptical when easily available data are assumed to be high-quality data. The ethnographer’s premise—that good data are often hard to produce—should lead even non-ethnographers to ask tough questions in their own traditions of their own research contributions: “What am I missing?” “What would better access look like?” “Why would anyone trust the data upon which I base my analysis?” “How adequate are the concepts I deploy to make sense of the evidence I have produced?” ^{Footnote 9}

Yet in response to these questions, a non-ethnographer may ask, “But how can you remain objective, given close-range engagement with the data?” The ethnographer reminds us that we inch closer to defensible conclusions when we recognize that: 1) people produce data. We may use machines, and we may standardize analytic strategies, but behind all scholarship stand specific people ensconced in a variety of personal and professional relationships; 2) high-quality data are produced, not simply found or available. This means that as much hard work typically goes into the production of high-quality data as goes into theorizing or analyzing them; 3) while we should continue to seek out truths, these truths are partial, incomplete, and necessarily provoke more questions. ^{Footnote 10} This counsels humility about the empirical scope of our conclusions. In short, even non-ethnographers would benefit from more readily deploying what Ricoeur (1970, 32-6) called a “hermeneutic of suspicion.”

Second, ethnographers are often better than non-ethnographers at embracing—or at least not running headlong away from—multiple meanings. A non-ethnographer might face great pressure to present evidence in mutually exclusive categories. For example, were the events in Eastern Ukraine in 2014: (a) a revolution (b) a coup (c) a popular mobilization or (d) a foreign intervention? To the ethnographer, it is not an analytic failing or a sign of indecision to acknowledge polysemy. Rather, encountered ambiguity is understood as a clue to the nature of social and political life. Ethnographers are not drawn to unambiguous accounts when the social actors being studied themselves experience ambiguity every day. Ethnographers are thus more likely than most to accept an ontology in which it is entirely normal for meanings to be unsettled, plural, and contested. ^{Footnote 11}

Non-ethnographers typically prize parsimony and non-ambiguity over an openness to multiple meanings, but some work nods in ethnographic directions. Consider Charles Ragin’s (Reference Ragin2000) fuzzy-set approach, which seeks to avoid reductionism by “fuzzifying” set-membership. Likewise, historical institutionalists recognize that if the “rules” of the political “game” are clearer to the analyst than they are to the actor, then some major analytic reckoning is in order (Sheingate Reference Sheingate, Mahoney and Thelen2010).

Imagine how a more ethnographic shift could change research. For example, if scholars were to publish all statistical regressions attempted, rather than just those that generate “interesting” findings (Leamer Reference Leamer1983), this would highlight the role that researcher choices play in producing what becomes “knowledge.” Some might go even further. What if a study were explicitly to provide at least two alternative formulations of major concepts before gathering data and beginning analysis? What if a study were explicitly to provide two alternative operationalizations of major concepts before collecting data and beginning analysis? Why not see what might emerge? If they produced contradictory accounts, this could provide much food for thought. At a minimum, such an approach would emphasize that it is a researcher’s choice to proceed as if meanings were fixed and single.

Instead of fearing lost control over the research process, ethnographers invite us to view what we gain by relaxing or even dispensing with orthodox research design. ^{Footnote 12} While the specifics vary widely, we always gain a view of political phenomena that is regularly refreshed and refined. If this suggestion runs against the logic of those who argue for “pre-registering” research designs to avoid tampering and ensure that all results—significant or not—are reported, this is because for research projects involving face-to-face contact in live social situations, a rigid research design becomes a straightjacket that restricts, not a safeguard that protects.

A third contribution of ethnographic approaches is therefore that they ask us to be open to surprise. Ethnographers have not cornered the market on inductive work, but—as M. David Forrest suggests in the symposium—if we are not open to encountering the unexpected, we risk producing an ossified body of knowledge. And then what really makes something a “finding?” If our findings rarely deviate from what we expect, should we not use a different word to describe them?

Keeping our eyes peeled for empirical surprises is crucial, but it is only half of what I have in mind. We also should remain open to findings that have surprising normative implications. What do I mean? If I were an opponent of the Human Terrain System (HTS) project, which employs teams of anthropologists to work in the service of US military aims in Afghanistan and Iraq, I nonetheless should remain open to the possible finding that such programs are effective at winning wars for the American military. And a surprise—whether of an empirical or normative sort—can be an excellent opportunity for scholarly reflection.

Finally, let me suggest that ethnography is well suited to exposing ethical dilemmas that go far beyond our universities’ IRB requirements. This is not a claim that ethnographers ipso facto behave ethically. That would be a strange and unsustainable generalization to make about any large and varied community, and particularly about one whose main scholarly method was the product of colonial expansion and rule (Said Reference Said1978). It would also be strange, given a recent and visible debate about ethical decisions made by Alice Goffman (Reference Goffman2014) in conducting her award-winning ethnography.

But here’s the thing: research conducted at close range has great potential to place important ethical matters into our field of vision. ^{Footnote 13} If I do research ethnographically, I am prone to see whatever impact my research has on my interlocutors in the “field,” particularly when I return to the same communities with which I have developed strong social ties. Although not always deeply embedded in those communities, ethnographers are nonetheless embedded enough to preclude a seamless transition to other research questions, other communities, other locales. Ties to community become “sticky”; they cease being one-off transactions. It is therefore unsurprising that most ethnographers choose to “give back”—in whatever form that occurs—to the communities in which they conducted their research. Ethnographers are thus particularly well positioned to see clearly how ethical judgments line the whole research process—from the moment of initial access to well past the moment of research publication. By contrast, were a scholar to conduct a large-N statistical analysis on the same general problematique, she or he would not actually encounter research “subjects” face-to-face much less share any emotional ties with them; it is hard to imagine this latter approach bringing into relief subjects’ predicaments and the whole panoply of ethical issues that emerge with any human relationship.

When ethnographers do get into ethical hot water, it is typically when they claim to be pure, fly-on-the-wall observers or when they write accounts so tidy that they resemble a just-so story more than a complex series of time- and space-delimited interactions about which one struggles to make sense. ^{Footnote 14} But these are the exceptions, because ethnography is an unusually embodied practice, as Erving Goffman (as transcribed by Lyn Lofland) describes.

To the reflective ethnographer, the IRB process only begins to address the wide range of ethical issues that close-range research necessarily entails (Fujii Reference Fujii2012). This sense of embodiment—of being in the presence of social ties with all that entails and of feeling how these ties have a physical and emotional impact on us as researchers—makes it hard to be blind to ethical considerations. In many cases, such reflection can redound to major theoretical insights that shift discussions of politics in important ways. ^{Footnote 16}