[Air-l] Fwd: [Interpretationandmethods] Summer course in Political and Policy Ethnography

[Jeremy Hunsinger]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dvora Yanow <D.Yanow at fsw.vu.nl>
> Date: April 23, 2007 6:40:16 AM EDT
> To: "Interpretationandmethods (E-mail)"  
> <interpretationandmethods at listserv.cddc.vt.edu>
> Subject: [Interpretationandmethods] Summer course in Political and  
> Policy Ethnography
> Reply-To: interpretation and methods group  
> <interpretationandmethods at listserv.cddc.vt.edu>
>
> Colleagues:
>
> May I bring to your attention I course I am teaching this summer  
> and ask that you pass the notice along to anyone you think might be  
> interested?  There are still a few spaces left.
>
> Course:  Political and Policy Ethnography
>
> ECPR Summer School in Methods and Techniques
> University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
> Monday, 23 July to Saturday, 4 August 2007
>
> Short Description:  This advanced seminar in interpretive research  
> methods is intended for students who are embarking on a field  
> research project or finishing one up and who are thinking about,  
> starting to or working on writing up their field notes and/or  
> research "reports."  Political and policy ethnographies include  
> traditional ethnographic or participant-observer studies, such as a  
> community or organizational study, but also "shadowing" a political  
> leader or policy-maker, formal interviewing (conversational  
> interviewing, not administering a survey questionnaire), and/or the  
> use of ethnographic methods to generate data which are then  
> analyzed using some other method (e.g., discourse analysis;  
> metaphor, category or other language-focused analysis; space  
> analysis; and so on).  Course topics will include:  writing as  
> method; questions of reflexivity and positionality; power and  
> politics in researcher roles; and the interpretive ontological and  
> epistemological presuppositions and philosophies underlying these  
> methods.  The final course requirement is a draft of a conference- 
> type paper or thesis/dissertation chapter.
>
> Prerequisites:  A basic course in interpretive (or "qualitative")  
> methods; some field research experience (i.e., observational, with  
> whatever degree of participation, including conversational  
> interviewing and/or document analysis as appropriate to the  
> research question).
> Longer description follows below; additional information on the  
> course (a daily schedule plus readings) is available at the website  
> below, on the course page.
> Registration and other details:  http://www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr/events/ 
> summerschools/ljubljana/index.aspx
>
> Yours,
> Dvora Yanow
>
>
>
> 3. Long outline
>
> Participant-observer ethnographic methods - central among the many  
> methods that fall under the umbrella of interpretive research  
> methods - have been "borrowed" from sociology and anthropology into  
> many fields in political science, including comparative  
> governmental studies, area studies, international relations, public  
> policy (domestic/state, regional, and local, international, EU,  
> etc.), public administration/local government studies,  
> organizational studies, and public law/legal studies.  They are not  
> new to political science, however, having been employed since the  
> 1950s, if not earlier.  They are useful in a wide range of settings  
> for research questions that seek to explore the meanings of  
> particular political practices, concepts or processes to  
> situational actors, often in order to illuminate a wider-ranging or  
> more theoretical issue of political concern.  These might include  
> studying how policy-makers or legislators actually think about the  
> decisions they make and how they go about them; how workers shape  
> their work practices and their relationships to managers; how  
> organizational administrators implement national policies; and so on.
>
> The course is designed for students who are about to embark on a  
> field research project, are in the midst of conducting one, or have  
> just come out of the field and who are thinking about, starting to  
> or working on writing up their field notes and drafts of  
> dissertation chapters.  Students might have conducted a traditional  
> ethnographic study or a participant-observer study - a community or  
> an organizational study, for example; the study may have involved  
> "shadowing" a political leader or policy-maker; it might have  
> included formal (expert, elite or other) interviews as well. (Note:  
> This means conversational interviewing - engaging people in talk -  
> not administering a survey questionnaire.)  Students may also have  
> used ethnographic methods (observing, with whatever degree of  
> participation; talking to situational members) along with reading  
> topic-relevant documents to generate data which they are intending  
> to analyze using other methods (e.g., discourse analysis; metaphor,  
> category or other language-focused analysis; space analysis; and so  
> on).
>
> We will focus on several of the concepts and issues central to  
> current debates about political and policy ethnography.  These  
> include:
> * questions of reflexivity and positionality, especially as these  
> bear on the generation of data, and the trustworthiness of one's  
> truth claims;
> * power and politics in the conduct of field research, especially  
> with respect to its relational character;
> * writing as method, but also reading as method - looking at one's  
> truth claims and their evidentiary base, and the ways in which  
> these are presented from the perspective of a prospective reader,  
> whether situational member or colleague.
> One lecture will be devoted to situating these methods in  
> interpretive ontological and epistemological presuppositions and  
> the philosophies they emerge from, including how these philosophies  
> engaged questions of knowledge and truth claims being debated at  
> the time of their development.  Throughout the course, we will be  
> addressing what is perhaps the central question today for those  
> doing such work:  in what ways is political and policy ethnography  
> similar to and different from participant-observer ethnographic  
> research as done in anthropology or sociology?
>
> Classes will be conducted as a seminar, with the exception of the  
> opening meeting and the lecture on 26 July.  Students will be  
> expected to come to class prepared to discuss the readings and to  
> draw links between them and their own research designs and field  
> experiences.  The final course requirement will be a draft of a  
> conference-type paper discussing issues emerging from the research,  
> a draft of a methods paper that might appear in a thesis/ 
> dissertation or conference panel, or some equivalent to be determined.
>
> Course readings:
> 1.  Dvora Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea, eds., Interpretation  
> and Method:  Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive Turn  
> (Armonk, NY:  M E Sharpe, 2006; YSS in the reading list).
> 2.  Other journal articles, conference papers, and book chapters.
>
>
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Jeremy Hunsinger
Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research,  
School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee  
(www.cipr.uwm.edu)

Words are things; and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a  
thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions,  
think. --Byron