1st Edition
Doing Fieldwork in Centres of Power The Case of Deliberative Assemblies
This book considers the challenges posed by fieldwork in centres of power to researchers in the social sciences, with a focus on deliberative assemblies. It includes work by an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars united around a common interest in producing complementary knowledge about today’s political institutions based on qualitative approaches. The chapters feature various case studies on specific issues that arose from the authors’ fieldwork, as well as broader theoretical syntheses. The contributors offer some practical tools and solutions for others who would like to engage in this type of research, given the difficulties and complexities of doing fieldwork in centres of power and the lack of methodological resources currently available. The volume is valuable reading for anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists and others with an interest in the ethnography of politics.
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Doing Fieldwork in Centres of Power
Jonathan Chibois and Samuel Shapiro
Part 1
Where are the Boundaries of Institutions?
Jonathan Chibois and Samuel Shapiro
1 Negotiating and Influencing Public Policy in Jordan: The Parliament as a Point of Entry
Camille Abescat
2 From Offline Brussels to Online Dispersion. Where is the European Parliament? A Proposal to Explore a Complex, Multi-Dimensional and Multi-Site Fieldwork
Sandrine Roginsky
3 Doing Political Fieldwork in Chinese Authoritarianism, Institutionalization of Deliberation and Consultation
Rongxin Li
Part 2
Must Fieldworkers Choose Between Being Insiders and Outsiders?
Jonathan Chibois and Samuel Shapiro
4 Parliamentary Ethnography: The Challenges of Fieldwork for an Insider in the Senate of Argentina
Laura Ferreño
5 Navigating Overlapping Methodological and Contextual Difficulties: ‘Following’ Women Politicians in Serbia and Kosovo/a”
Gordana Subotic
6 The Activist Researcher: Negotiating Responsibility for Land-Grabbing in the United Nations
Birgit Müller
Part 3
What Collective Research Do to Fieldwork?
Jonathan Chibois and Samuel Shapiro
7 The Citizens’ Climate Convention: A Tale of an Ethnography of a Deliberative Arena Under Pressure
Simon Baeckelandt
8 Collaborative Reflexive Inquiry Into Parliaments: Ethnographers Negotiating During Research on Politics
Cristiane Bernardes, Andrea Cornwall, Emma Crewe & Telma Hoyler
9 Ethnography of Parliamentary Constituencies: Navigating the Sensitivities of Political Research in Bangladesh
Zahir Ahmed
Part 4
Looking Back: Reflecting on Long-Term Research Trajectories
Jonathan Chibois and Samuel Shapiro
10. Getting to the Soul of Parliaments: Using Multi-Methods to Understand the Parliamentary Ecosystem
by Cristina Leston-Bandeira
11 From One Institution to Another: Three Investigations into Power Structures
Irène Bellier
Biography
Jonathan Chibois is an assistant researcher in political anthropology at the Laboratory of Political Anthropology (LAP). He holds a PhD from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris.
Samuel Shapiro is a PhD candidate in anthropology at Université Laval in Canada.
