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- Convenors:
-
Jonathan Chibois
(School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS))
Samuel Shapiro (Université Laval)
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- Discussant:
-
Marta Cabezas
(Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
- Formats:
- Panels
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 21 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
This panel aims to bring together anthropologists and political scientists to reflect on the means of undertaking ethnographic fieldwork within parliaments, which are state political institutions. Its purpose is to prepare a collective publication.
Long Abstract:
Work on the anthropology of the state represents a paradox in that far more of this research approaches the state from its margins and peripheries than by its centres of power. Some anthropological work on governance has specifically focused on international institutions using ethnographic methods, but it is striking to notice that parliamentary institutions are relatively understudied. Dialogue with political scientists seems obvious when studying such institutions, but epistemological and methodological differences between the two disciplines remain and are sometimes significant. With that in mind, this panel aims to bring together anthropologists and political scientists in order to develop a common reflection on the methods, issues and perspectives of an ethnography of parliaments as well as its broader contribution to the study of governance. Panellists will be especially asked to consider methodological questions related to the practice of fieldwork in such contexts (e.g. access, freedom of investigation, the weight of institutional discourses, the lack of legitimacy of academic perspectives, the relationship between fieldwork and written research, the role of the informal in fieldwork). This panel comes out of an interdisciplinary research group on worldwide parliaments that wishes to be structured, expand and take advantage of the EASA conference to work towards a collective publication (e.g. journal issue or edited volume). The panel might consist of one traditional on-site session and possibly a second, nearly carbon-neutral session in order to open up our questions to further colleagues who are not able to attend the conference in person.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 21 July, 2020, -Paper short abstract:
This paper is based on an ethnography of the Portuguese Parliament, conducted between 2015 and 2018, and will discuss what socially characterizes the Portuguese MPs, how they organize themselves in a hierarchal and ritual world, and the ethical dilemmas the ethnographer faced in the fieldwork.
Paper long abstract:
Assembleia da República is the house of the Portuguese Parliament. Studied mainly by political scientists and legal scholars, these analyses tend to ignore aspects such as the interactional dimension of politics, the meaning of rituals, and the symbolic aspects that organize everyday life. This paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Portuguese Parliament, seeking to understand political representation in action and from within, thus going beyond institutional self-representations and media discourse. Firstly, I discuss how and why political representation is socially confined: largely dominated by educated men, coming from the largest urban areas and part of multiple political environments. Then, it is argued that the individual agency of the MPs can only be understood in the context of their insertion in a hierarchical and ritual world. Finally, it is contended that different class positions (Bourdieu, 1985; Friedman and Laurison, 2019) enhance or inhibit access and adaptation to the political field, where the unequal distribution of political capital, establishes a set of cultural boundaries between who is inside and who is outside. This research has been a quest with many dilemmas. The absence of a formal authorization could be reversed only by pursuing trust relations with people whose work I accompanied, safeguarding their own anonymity. In its turn, there were ethical implications in the making of the archive. What may and not may publicly be divulged - and how, with and whom? Lastly, I discuss the challenges involved when articulating ethical dilemmas with the epistemological ambition of the research.
Paper short abstract:
Gender and politics scholars are increasingly making appeals to ethnographic methodology to analyse parliaments. Drawing on experience of ethnographic methodology in the UK and European Parliaments, this paper explores how the tools and practices of ethnography travel between different parliaments.
Paper long abstract:
Gender and politics scholars are increasingly making appeals to ethnographic methodology in order to build in heterogeneity, agency, and contradictions int their analyses of gender performance in parliamentary settings, and to capture the notion that gender is performed over time. This academic movement has accompanied a practitioner movement to work towards gender-sensitive parliaments. This paper asks: how do the tools and practices of ethnography travel between different parliaments?
More specifically, this paper draws upon fieldwork conducted in the UK parliament and European parliaments, to discuss some of the tensions when the optics and practices of ethnography are applied to different parliamentary settings. The paper has three sections to examine tensions when conducting ethnographies in different legislative settings. It draws upon (1) the legislative differences of the parliamentary settings and with this in mind - whether there can be a distinct subtype of political ethnography, known as 'parliamentary ethnography'; (2) conceptual and interactional differences in the very meaning of gender in transnational environments; and (3) the practical differences in terms of facilitating a parliamentary ethnography, learning from the two fieldsites. Overall, this paper contributes to emerging methodological debates about conducting ethnography in parliamentary settings.
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on methodological and contextual questions related to the practice of ethnography in 'politically sensitive research environments' (Browne and McBride, 2015, p. 34), such as Serbia and Kosovo/a.
Paper long abstract:
This paper focuses on methodological and contextual questions related to the practice of ethnography in 'politically sensitive research environments' (Browne and McBride, 2015), such as Serbia and Kosovo/a. Empirical data in this paper was collected during my doctoral fieldwork in Serbia and Kosovo/a, which was conducted between March 2017 and April 2018. My fieldwork consisted of 'following the people' (Marcus, 1995) or, in my case, 'following the women politicians' in their places of work, conducting participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and multi-sited deep hanging out (Geertz, 1998). I spent one day each week with one politician, observing and participating in her respective activities for that day (i.e., parliament sessions, meetings with citizens, party meetings, conferences, meetings with the Prime Minister). In total, I followed six women politicians, including two women Members of Parliament (MPs) in Serbia, three MPs in Kosovo/a, and one Local Committee Member from the Municipality of North Mitrovica in the period of one year. I also interviewed a total of 20 women politicians from Serbia and Kosovo/a as well as participated in numerous conferences, coffee meetings, lunches, and field trips with women politicians. In the first part of this paper, I will lay the main methodological and contextual issues that emerged during my fieldwork in Serbia and Kosovo/a. In the second part, I will propose some of the techniques and solutions I applied to navigate these issues and other politically explosive debates that follow ethnographic work in politically sensitive environments.