Hanging Out in International Politics: Two Kinds of Explanatory Political Ethnography for IR

Abstract

The use of ethnographic methods is on the rise in International Relations. However, research in this area has largely been constrained to critical or interpretive analysis of nontraditional objects of study. This has been driven in part by two practical problems that limit ethnographic analysis: that of aggregation, as international phenomena are necessarily large in scale, and that of access, as institutional settings are often closed or secretive. While we commend critical and nontraditional research for driving much‐needed expansion of the disciplinary agenda, we offer a complementary account, arguing that scholars can also use ethnographic methods in explanatory research. To do so, we draw on two methodological literatures in anthropology. The first approximates ethnographic research through historical immersion. The second applies ethnographic methods at multiple research sites, tracking transnational phenomena across them. The paper sketches prospective studies of each kind, concerning the creation and implementation of the United Nations. While neither method is entirely new to IR, the methodological literatures in question have yet to receive systematic treatment in the field.

Introduction: Decentring the study of international interventions

“…In particular, ethnographic approaches have gained rapid ground in IR in recent years (see e.g. MacKay and Levin, 2015;Stepputat and Larsen, 2015;Vrasti, 2008), and we seek to harness approaches drawn from political ethnography for our analysis. This allows us to study processes of sensemaking and world-making in interventions in a way that provides richer insights into the views and perspectives of people engaged in and affected by interventions.…”

Improvising the international: Theorizing the everyday of intervention from the field

“…Theorizing from the field is therefore able to challenge mistaken assumptions that international discourses travel almost unaltered to the field. The value added by taking on an ethnographic approach is, thus, not that it provides clear and concrete tools for analysing the field (MacKay and Levin, 2015: 167), on the contrary, that it is able to challenge these tools. What is crucial is that you let the field challenge your theories, because the goal is to allow the field itself to be theory generating.…”

“…As witnessed in the recent ethnographic and practice turns (Hopf, 2010; MacKay and Levin, 2015) International Relations scholars should be interested in how interventions in different parts of the world are not only theorized and legitimized, but also enacted. The expanding field of studies that engage with the international from an ethnographic stance clearly demonstrates the value of ethnographic insights, showing that underneath the consistent logic of policy documents lies a whole world of important social dynamics (Autesserre, 2014; Barnett, 2002; Dauphinee, 2013).…”

The national and the international

“…Through increased attention to the 'everyday international', scholars question the way 'the international' dwells and is experienced in everyday life (Montison 2010;Shim 2016;Guillaume 2011). Along with authors engaged in a 'local turn' (Mac Ginty and Richmond 2013), this has led to the diffusion of immersive methodologies, like ethnography, into the discipline (MacKay and Levin 2015;Vrasti 2008; Rancatore 2010).…”