A Methodological Approach to Studying Global Policy Regimes Finn Stepputat and Jessica Larsen DIIS Working Paper 2015:01
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DIIS WORKINGDIIS WORKING PAPER 2015:01PAPER Global political ethnography: A methodological approach to studying global policy regimes Finn Stepputat and Jessica Larsen DIIS Working Paper 2015:01 WORKING PAPER WORKING 1 DIIS WORKING PAPER 2015:01 FINN STEPPUTAT Senior Researcher, Peace, Risk and Violence, DIIS [email protected] JESSICA LARSEN PhD Candidate, Peace, Risk and Violence, DIIS [email protected] DIIS Working Papers make DIIS researchers’ and DIIS project partners’ work available in progress towards proper publishing. They may include important documentation which is not necessarily published elsewhere. DIIS Working Papers are published under the responsibility of the author alone. DIIS Working Papers should not be quoted without the expressed permission of the author. DIIS WORKING PAPER 2015:01 © The authors and DIIS, Copenhagen 2015 DIIS • Danish Institute for International Studies Østbanegade 117, DK-2100, Copenhagen, Denmark Ph: +45 32 69 87 87 E-mail: [email protected] Web: www.diis.dk Layout: Allan Lind Jørgensen ISBN: 978-87-7605-738-1 (pdf) DIIS publications can be downloaded free of charge from www.diis.dk 2 DIIS WORKING PAPER 2015:01 CONTENTS Introduction 4 Ethnography: participant observation and beyond 5 Ethnography and the political 8 Political anthropology 8 Political ethnography 10 Interpretative Policy Analysis (IPA) 12 Towards a global political ethnography 13 The global and the local 13 Field, apparatus and assemblage 16 Ethical considerations 19 Conclusions 22 Literature 23 3 DIIS WORKING PAPER 2015:01 “Producing ethnography is ongoing, and so are relationships that make up the ‘lives’ of pol- its effects” (Rancatore 2010: 75). icies. Interpretative policy and organization- al studies have shown that the lives of poli- cies are formed by dynamics and rationalities that have less to do with their explicit aims INTRODUCTION than with their capacity to bring together pol- icy actors or to depoliticize highly political is- The aim of this working paper is to sketch out sues, and with contingencies, turf battles, and the contours of an emerging methodology institutional interests. We suggest that eth- for studying global policy regimes at a time nography provides approaches that are well when changing world orders, new actors, and suited to studying these kinds of dynamics new technologies challenge and transform and contingencies which seem to be even these regimes.1 In fields such as environment more important with the degrees of com- and climate change, migration, development, plexity and encompassment that characterize natural resources, trade, and state & peace- current global policies. building, comprehensive policy regimes As Shore and Wright (2011) suggest, pol- have developed to deal with problems at a icy studies can provide windows onto ‘larg- global scale. The policy processes involve a er processes of governance, power and so- wide range of international, national, trans- cial change that are shaping the world today’ and subnational, governmental and non- (Shore and Wright 2001: 1), which is a very governmental actors; they blur or redefine good reason in itself for developing this kind boundaries of private and public domains, of of studies. But they might also point to rea- the state and the ‘non-state’; and they produce sons why policies often fail to reach their effects (and affect) at many different levels. aims, why they can have more unintended The paper focuses on the role of ethno- than intended effects, or why they continue graphy in global policy studies. Ethnography to be reproduced despite poor ‘results’. One is apt for studying meanings and effects of example would be state- and peace-building policies among people ‘on the ground’ but policies that emphasize the importance of may also be used to ‘study up’ (Nader 1972); context, local ownership and non-state ac- that is to study policies among their makers, tors while consistently producing abstract, translators (Latour 1986), and unmakers, and state-centered blueprints and marginalizing to understand how assemblages of knowl- local actors (Baranyi and Desrosiers 2012). edge, policy, practice and technology come Linked to the surging popularity of together, transform, and fall apart. Closely ANT, as well as practice-oriented and prag- associated with the study of context and con- matic approaches in social and political stud- textualization, ethnography can help to show ies, the interest in ethnography seems to be how the encompassing, abstract and mobile increasing in various disciplines and fields of templates of global policies are articulated policy studies. Thus, we see how political eth- in a contingent, unstable, and messy inter- nography, political anthropology, global eth- nography, and interpretative policy analysis, 1 This working paper was written to frame the discussions are converging across disciplines to form a at the international workshop, ’Global Political Ethnography: Studying Policy Regimes in Flux’, at the Danish Institute for dynamic field worth exploring with a focus International Studies (DIIS), November 25-26, 2014. on global policy analysis. At the same time, 4 DIIS WORKING PAPER 2015:01 the use of ethnography in the analysis of dif- icy analysis, we need conceptually and theo- ferent policy fields is uneven, and disciplines retically informed reflections. We will con- that have incorporated ethnography vary in sider various contributions, including global their understanding and use of the method- ethnography and others that provide valuable ology. suggestions and building blocks. But there is On this background, the purpose of this a lot more to be done conceptually and theo- working paper is twofold: Firstly, we seek to retically to develop what we will call a global contribute to the emerging cross-disciplinary political ethnography as such. dialogue and provide some common ground The paper is organized in three parts: the for discussions by introducing different aca- first looks into ideas and practices of ethno- demic fields in which ethnographic studies of graphy; the second part focuses on approach- politics and (global) policies are developing. es to studying policy and the political, includ- We do not pretend to provide a full overview ing political ethnography, political anthropol- of these extensive fields, but since it is our ogy and interpretive policy analysis; and the impression that disciplinary developments third part discusses different contributions to some degree have taken place in isolation that have taken on the challenge of study- from one another – political ethnography ing ethnographically the lives of global pol- separately from political anthropology,2 and icies in a context of accelerated processes of analysis of international policies separately globalization through concepts of scale, net- from domestic policy analysis3 – we will pres- work, field, apparatus and assemblages. To- ent the different strands of ethnographic en- gether, these contributions draw the contours gagement with the political as building blocks of an emerging field of global political eth- to consider the development of a global nography. political ethnography. Secondly, the paper focuses on and seeks to push the methodological discussions con- cerning how to approach ethnographical- ETHNOGRAPHY: PARTICIPANT ly the highly complex global policy process- OBSERVATION AND BEYOND es that are currently developing. What are the appropriate empirical scale(s) and units In this paper, ethnography is taken as a of analysis when studying global policy net- collective term for method and methodology, works? How are the voices and practices of that is, data collection techniques on actors operating at different scales and in dif- the one hand and the consideration of ferent sites balanced, weighed, and connect- epistemological and ontological issues in the ed in policy narratives informed by ethno- research process on the other (Schwartz-Shea graphic analysis? In order to identify sites, and Yanow 2002). What concerns us most encounters, situations and materials where here is methodology. But since ethnography ethnographic approaches can generate dif- has long been associated with the method ferent and maybe more critical insights than of participant observation in particular, we more conventional approaches to global pol- will start by discussing issues of method in the scholarly literature that deals with the 2 See for example Joseph and Auyero 2007 ethnographic study of global governance and 3 See Yanow 2015 policy. 5 DIIS WORKING PAPER 2015:01 A great strength of ethnography is its ability scholars who have been ‘studying up’ (Nader to generate empirical data, which otherwise 1972), looking into elites, security commu- would not feed into scientific thinking and nities, criminal networks or similar, have ex- policy analysis. Ethnography enables ground- perienced problems of ‘being there’. In such ed knowledge by way of the researcher im- studies, access to fieldwork sites, informants mersing herself in the setting(s) relevant to and knowledge can be particularly challeng- the object of study and connecting the units ing, and the method of participant obser- of data to an analytical whole that generates vation thus less applicable. Gusterson, who intimate understandings of local practices studied nuclear power plant laboratories with and social relations. Through critical reflec- no access granted, developed instead of par- tion and theoretical consultation, the empir- ticipant observation an approach that he calls ical