Prayer, Contentious Politics, and the Women of the Wall: The Benefits of Collaboration in Participant Observation at Intense, Multifocal Events

Abstract

Social scientists who engage in qualitative fieldwork typically follow the ethnographic model of the single scholar in the field. We argue that collaboration in on-site participant observation is an underutilized but vital methodological tool, particularly in the case of one common form of communal conflict in the late-modern period: intense, multifocal events. At mass demonstrations, rallies with small groups of opposing forces, and other public events involving multiple actors, sights, sounds, and interactions, collaboration provides multiple perspectives in a given research moment that one researcher cannot, by definition, experience and observe alone. By joining forces, two researchers may exploit variations in their physical vantage points, disciplinary training, range of area knowledge, and personal background (including gender, ethnicity, religion, and class) to produce more accurate and more meaningful studies. We support our claims with evidence from our own impromptu on-site collaboration in the case of a women's prayer session at the Western Wall in Jerusalem in June 2000.

Participant Experiences at a Charismatic Catholic Youth Rally: What Happens When Participant Socialization and Organizer Intentions Do Not Match?

“…Having multiple researchers present ensured that the research team was later able to compile a rich composite account of the rally from multiple points of view, as recommended by Mazie and Woods (2003).…”

Observing Protest from a Place: The World Social Forum in Dakar (2011)

“…We had already adopted a comparable approach (collective and reflexive, with an ethnographic dimension) in Nairobi (Pommerolle and Siméant, 2011) in 2007 (on the benefits of collaboration in participant observation at intense, multifocal events, see also Mazie and Woods, 2003). At that time, we were seeking to understand how Africa was described and staged, how the idea of a capability for action specific to the inhabitants of the African continent was generated and how pan-African and anti-imperialist discourses were mobilized in the process.…”

Collaborative Ethnography of Global Environmental Governance

“…This multiplicity of terminologies stems partly from the multiple types of arrangements that working in a team can involve, ranging also form one-time observations to longitudinal studies. These can include collaboration in ethnographic data gathering and interpretation over an extended period within a sedentary community (Buford May & Pattillo-McCoy, 2000;Gerstl-Pepin & Gunzenhauser, 2002;Low et al, 2005), common observations of a single complex and crowded event site (Mazie & Woods, 2003;Paulsen, 2009), longer-term collaboration involving division of labour to observe a sequence of events (Gray et al, 2019), and parallel work by observation teams at parallel field sites (Jarzabkowski et al, 2015). It is these collective or teambased approaches that inspired early global event ethnographers, as they promise to remediate some of the most significant problems with short-term observation.…”