Comparison with an Ethnographic Sensibility

Simmons, Erica S.; Smith, Nicholas Rush

doi:10.1017/s1049096516002286

Cited by 45 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 15 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…I follow a number of scholars that have advocated for the use of ethnographic methods in political science (Wedeen 2010;Schatz 2009;Simmons and Smith 2017). Wedeen (1999) argues that ethnography can be particularly useful to fill in the gaps between official demonstrations of obedience and ordinary experiences of unbelief and resistance-in a sense, this study attempts the reverse, tracing structures of regulation in the seemingly disobedient.…”

Section: Methodology and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Informal Institutions and the Regulation of Smuggling in North Africa

Gallien¹

2019

Perspect. polit.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Contemporary writing on North African borderlands invokes the idea of a general, unregulated porosity through which small-scale informal traders of food or textiles move alongside drug smugglers and terrorists. I challenge that conception, demonstrating that the vast majority of smuggling activity is in fact highly regulated through a dense network of informal institutions that determine the costs, quantity, and types of goods that can pass through certain nodes, typically segmenting licit from illicit goods.While informal, the institutions regulating this trade are largely impersonal and contain third-party enforcement, hence providing a direct empirical challenge to common characterisations of informal institutions in political science. I argue that revisiting the characteristics associated with informal institutions, and understanding them as contingent on their political environment, can provide a new starting point for studying institutions, the politics of informality, state capacity, and the regulation of illegal economies.

show abstract

Section: Methodology and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Informal Institutions and the Regulation of Smuggling in North Africa

Gallien¹

2019

Perspect. polit.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Process tracing is excellent for illuminating mechanisms (Collier : 824). By comparing various movements for postwar compensation with an “ethnographic sensibility,” I answer Simmons and Smith's () call for more attention to meaning‐making, which is critical for studying indirect effects. As Galanter (: 136) noted, messages from courts have different consequences depending on how they are received and interpreted.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Mechanisms behind Litigation's “Radiating Effects”: Historical Grievances against Japan

Arrington¹

2019

Law Soc Rev

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Scholars argue that litigation can have positive and negative “radiating” or indirect effects for social movements, irrespective of formal judicial decisions. They see litigation as a dynamic process with distinctive features yet nonetheless intertwined with advocacy in other forums. Litigation can indirectly shape collective identities, reframe debates, or provide political leverage. However, the mechanisms behind these radiating effects are poorly understood. Through an analysis of lawsuits and related activism by Korean survivors of Japanese actions in the first half of the twentieth century, this article disaggregates the mechanisms behind litigation's productive indirect effects. It theorizes and illustrates mechanisms such as attribution of similarity, brokerage, issue dramatization, political cover, and intergroup discussions. These mechanisms help us understand how litigants obtain litigation's indirect effects and thus also the broader impact of postwar compensation lawsuits in East Asia, despite few judicial victories. The article contributes non‐Western and transnational cases to scholarship on litigation's indirect effects.

show abstract

“…However, as the works discussed above suggest, this effort to explore ambiguities should be one of the major reasons for ethnographers to pursue comparative strategies, although it requires that comparative ethnographers think differently about comparison than current best practices in the discipline might suggest-what we call elsewhere "comparison with an ethnographic sensibility." 64 Adopting an "ethnographic sensibility" requires attention not only to context, 65 but also to the political and social meanings that make that context intelligible. 66 When scholars adopt an ethnographic sensibility, they pay attention to how people make sense of their worlds; they seek to "glean the meanings that the people under study attribute to their social and political reality."…”

Section: Challenges Of Doing Ethnography Comparatively and Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Case for Comparative Ethnography

Simmons¹,

Smith²

2019

comp polit

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To what extent can comparative methods and ethnographic inquiry combine to advance knowledge in political science? Ethnography is becoming an increasingly popular method within political science. Yet both proponents and detractors often see it as a technique best suited for producing in-depth knowledge about a particular case or for explicating the meaning of a particular political behavior. This article argues that comparative ethnography—ethnographic research that explicitly and intentionally builds an argument through the analysis of two or more cases—can be of particular value to political scientists, and to scholars of comparative politics in particular. The approach can hone our theoretical models, challenge existing conceptual categories, and help develop portable political insights. This article has two goals: (1) to show that comparative ethnographic research deserves a prominent place in the repertoire of qualitative methods and (2) to elaborate the logics of inquiry behind such comparisons so that scholars will be better equipped to use them more frequently. Two or more cases are not always better than one, but comparative ethnography can yield new and different insights with important implications for our understandings of politics.

show abstract

Comparison with an Ethnographic Sensibility

Cited by 45 publications

References 15 publications

Informal Institutions and the Regulation of Smuggling in North Africa

Informal Institutions and the Regulation of Smuggling in North Africa

The Mechanisms behind Litigation's “Radiating Effects”: Historical Grievances against Japan

The Case for Comparative Ethnography

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About