Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-hvd4g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-07T22:39:28.776Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Fieldwork in Political Theory: Five Arguments for an Ethnographic Sensibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 June 2017

Lisa Herzog  and
Bernardo Zacka
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article makes a positive case for an ethnographic sensibility in political theory. Drawing on published ethnographies and original fieldwork, it argues that an ethnographic sensibility can contribute to normative reflection in five distinct ways. It can help uncover the nature of situated normative demands (epistemic argument); diagnose obstacles encountered when responding to these demands (diagnostic argument); evaluate practices and institutions against a given set of values (evaluative argument); probe, question and refine our understanding of values (valuational argument); and uncover underlying social ontologies (ontological argument). The contribution of ethnography to normative theory is distinguished from that of other forms of empirical research, and the dangers of perspectival absorption, bias and particularism are addressed.

Keywords

methodologyreflective equilibriumethnographynon-ideal theorynormative case study
Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , April 2019 , pp. 763 - 784
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Bavarian School of Public Policy, Technical University of Munich (email: [email protected]); Bernardo Zacka, Christ’s College, University of Cambridge (email: [email protected]). We would like to thank Andrew Walton, Anca Gheaus and Paul Sagar, as well audiences at Stanford University and four anonymous reviewers for the British Journal of Political Science for very helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article.

References

Anderson, Elizabeth. 1991. John Stuart Mill and Experiments in Living. Ethics 102:4–26.Google Scholar
Anderson, Elizabeth. 2010. The Imperative of Integration. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9781400836826Google Scholar
Arneson, Richard. 1987. Meaningful Work and Market Socialism. Ethics 97:517–545.Google Scholar
Arneson, Richard. 2010. Meaningful Work and Market Socialism Revisited. Analyse & Kritik 31:139–151.Google Scholar
Banner, Michael. 2014. The Ethics of Everyday Life: Moral Theology, Social Anthropology, and the Imagination of the Human. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bargu, Banu. 2014. Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Bayard de Volo, Lorraine. 2009. Participant Observation, Politics, and Power Relations: Nicaraguan Mothers and U.S. Casino Waitresses. In Political Ethnography: What Immersion Contributes to the Study of Power, edited by Edward Schatz, 217–236. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bevir, Mark, and Rhodes, R. A. W.. 2003. Interpreting British Governance. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Blaikie, Norman. 1993. Approaches to Social Enquiry. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Boltanski, Luc. 2010. Soziologie und Sozialkritik (Frankfurter Adorno-Vorlesungen 2008). Berlin: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Boltanski, Luc, and Thévenot, Laurent. 2006. On Justification. The Economies of Worth . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Clastres, Pierre. 1987. Society Against the State. New York: Zone Books.Google Scholar
Clifford, James, and Marcus, George E., eds. 1986. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Cooper, Terry L. 1987. Hierarchy, Virtue, and the Practice of Public Administration: A Perspective for Normative Ethics. Public Administration Review 47:320–328.10.2307/975312Google Scholar
Cooper, Terry L. 2004. Big Questions in Administrative Ethics: A Need for Focused, Collaborative Effort. Public Administration Review 64:395–407.Google Scholar
Dahl, Robert. 1985. A Preface to Economic Democracy. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Dancy, Jonathan. 2004. Ethics Without Principles. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Durkheim, Émile. 1982. The Rules of Sociological Method: And Selected Texts on Sociology and its Method, edited by Steven Lukes. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Emmet, Dorothy. 1966. Rules, Roles and Relations. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Fenno, Richard. 1978. Home Style: House Members in Their Districts. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Fenno, Richard. 1996. Senators on the Campaign Trail: The Politics of Representation. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1966. Les mots et les choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1969. L’archéologie du savoir. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1975. Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Galston, William. 2005. Realism in Political Theory. European Journal of Political Theory 9:385–411.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture. In Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 3–30. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Geuss, Raymond. 2008. Philosophy and Real Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Guenther, Lisa. 2013. Solitary Confinement. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Guenther, Lisa, ND. Social Death and its Afterlives: A Critical Phenomenology of Solitary Confinement. Available from http://www.academia.edu/1883215/Social_Death_and_its_Afterlives_A_Critical_Phenomenology_of_Solitary_Confinement, accessed 1 November 2016.Google Scholar
Haidt, Jonathan. 2001. The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment. Psychological Review 108:814–834.Google Scholar
Hay, Colin. 2006. Political Ontology. In The Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis, edited by Robert E. Goodin and Charles Tilly, 78–97. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hayward, Clarissa Rile. 2000. De-Facing Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Herzog, Lisa. 2015. No Company is an Island. Sector-Related Responsibilities as Elements of Corporate Social Responsibility. Journal of Business Ethics. doi: 10.1007/s10551-015-2923-7.Google Scholar
Honneth, Axel. 2011. Das Recht der Freiheit. Grundriß einer demokratischen Sittlichkeit. Berlin: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Hsieh, Nien-Hê. 2008. Survey Article: Justice in Production. The Journal of Political Philosophy 16:72–100.Google Scholar
Katz, Jack. 1983. A Theory of Qualitative Methodology: The Social System of Analytic Fieldwork. In Contemporary Field Research: A Collection of Readings, edited by Robert M. Emerson, 127–148. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Knobe, Joshua. 2003. Intentional Action and Side Effects in Ordinary Language. Analysis 63:190–194.Google Scholar
Knobe, Joshua, Lombrozo, Tania, and Nichols, Shaun, eds. 2015. Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kunda, Gideon. 1996. Engineering Culture. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Laidlaw, James. 2013. The Subject of Virtue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lambek, Michael, ed. 2010. Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language, and Action. New York: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Lamont, Michelle. 2012. Towards a Comparative Sociology of Valuation. Annual Review of Sociology 38:201–221.Google Scholar
Lear, Jonathan. 2008. Radical Hope . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Levinson, Meira. 2012. No Citizen Left Behind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lindhorst, Taryn, and Padgett, Julianna D.. 2005. Disjunctures for Women and Frontline Workers: Implementation of the Family Violence Option. Social Service Review 79:405–429.Google Scholar
Luetge, Christoph, Rusch, Hannes, and Uhl, Matthias, eds. 2014. Experimental Ethics: Towards an Empirical Moral Philosophy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
MacMahon, Christopher. 1994. Authority and Democracy. A General Theory of Government and Management. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mansbridge, Jane. 1983. Beyond Adversary Democracy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Marcus, George E., and Fischer, Michael M. J.. 1986. Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1859. On Liberty. London: Longman, Roberts & Green Co.Google Scholar
Monin, Benoît, Pizarro, David A., and Beer, Jennifer S.. 2007. Deciding Versus Reacting: Conceptions of Moral Judgment and the Reason-Affect Debate. Review of General Psychology 11:99–111.Google Scholar
Moody-Adams, Michelle. 1997. Fieldwork in Familiar Places. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha. 1990. Introduction: Form and Content, Philosophy and Literature. In Martha Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature, 3–53. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha. 1995. Poetic Justice. The Literary Imagination and Public Life. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha. 2003. Upheavals of Thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Okin, Susan. 1999. Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? In Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? edited by Martha Nussbaum, Joshua Cohen and Matthew Howard, 9–24. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ouchi, William G. 1980. Markets, Bureaucracies, and Clans. Administrative Science Quarterly 25:129–141.Google Scholar
Pachirat, Timothy. 2009. Shouts and Murmurs: The Ethnographer’s Potion. Qualitative & Multi-Method Research 7:41–44.Google Scholar
Pachirat, Timothy. 2011. Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Pader, Ellen. 2006. Seeing with an Ethnographic Sensibility. In Interpretation and Method, edited by Dvora Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea, 161–175. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Rabinow, Paul. 1977. Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rabinow, Paul, and Sullivan, William M., eds. 1987. Interpretive Social Science: A Second Look. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1975. The Independence of Moral Theory. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 48:5–22.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rubenstein, Jennifer C. 2015. Between Samaritans and States: The Political Ethics of Humanitarian INGOs. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sangiovanni, Andrea. 2016. How Practices Matter. The Journal of Political Philosophy 24:3–23.Google Scholar
Schatz, Edward, ed. 2009. Political Ethnography: What Immersion Contributes to the Study of Power. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Schatzki, Theodore R. 1996. Social Practices: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity and the Social. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Adina. 1982. Meaningful Work. Ethics 92:634–646.Google Scholar
Schwartz-Shea, Peregrine, and Yanow, Dvora. 2012. Interpretive Research Design: Concepts and Processes. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 2008. What Do We Want from a Theory of Justice? The Journal of Philosophy 103:215–238.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 2011. The Idea of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sharp, Lesley. 2006. Strange Harvest: Organ Transplants, Denatured Bodies, and the Transformed Self. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Shklar, Judith. 1984. Ordinary Vices. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Soss, Joe. 2000. Unwanted Claims. The Politics of Participation in the U.S. Welfare System. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Swidler, Ann. 1986. Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies. American Sociological Review 51:273–286.Google Scholar
Thacher, David. 2006. The Normative Case Study. American Journal of Sociology 111:1631–1676.Google Scholar
Tversky, Amos, and Kahneman, Daniel. 1981. The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice. Science 211:453–458.Google Scholar
Van Maanen, John. 1988. Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Walsh, Katherine Cramer. 2009. Scholars as Citizens. In Political Ethnography: What Immersion Contributes to the Study of Power, edited by Edward Schatz, 165–182. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Walzer, Michael. 1983. Spheres of Justice. A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Walzer, Michael. 1987. Interpretation and Social Criticism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Wedeen, Lisa. 1999. Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wedeen, Lisa. 2002. Conceptualizing Culture: Possibilities for Political Science. The American Political Science Review 96:713–728.Google Scholar
Wedeen, Lisa. 2008. Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power and Performance in Yemen. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wedeen, Lisa. 2010. Reflections on Ethnographic Work in Political Science. Annual Review of Political Science 13:255–272.Google Scholar
Weick, Karl. 1995. Sensemaking in Organizations. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Wiens, David. 2012. Prescribing Institutions Without Ideal Theory. The Journal of Political Philosophy 20:45–70.Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard. 1985. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard. 1986. Reply to Simon Blackburn. Philosophical Books 27:203–205.Google Scholar
Wood, Elisabeth Jean. 2003. Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Yanow, Dvora, and Schartz-Shea, Peregrine, eds. 2006. Interpretation and Method. New York: M. E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Zacka, Bernardo. 2017. When the State Meets the Street: Public Service and Moral Agency. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar