Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to stress out methodological questions we encounter while doing multi-sited and multi-level ethnography trying to capture together production and domestication of globalized norms, on the basis of empirical data collected in the capital city of the North of Madagascar.

Paper long abstract:

I wish to initiate a discussion on methodological frameworks and toolboxes available for investigating the processes of production and appropriation of globalized norms. This will be based on my anthropological doctoral research on the extraverted dimension of municipal government or, more precisely, on the co-production -at a local/global interface- of a municipal scale of government. I am currently carrying out a case study in Diego-Suarez (Madagascar).

Using empirical data related to local policies and international programs of urban water supply, I will stress out a few methodological challenges I encounter and results we could both discuss. How can we deal with data of different nature and quality while doing a multi-sited ethnography aiming at seriously ethnographying connections between local/national and global levels, aiming also at precisely describing the links between production and domestication of globalized norms processes? Which is the interest of choosing as main field a local governmental institution partly shaped by external forces (rather than for example an international institution or program)? How can we take into account the historicity and the sedimentation of these extraverted processes of producing governementalities? What are the respective benefits of individual life-trajectories and organizational analyses? To what extent do they enable firstly, to take into account generational, political or social conflicts and solidarities in understanding how globalized norms are locally embedded or rejected, secondly, to describe how the anti-politics machine, institutional learning or unlearning dynamics (in the "southern" political and administrative organizations) are really functioning, and how do brokerage and translation work?