Ethnographic Approaches to Contentious Politics: The What, How, and Why

• Author: Erica S. Simmons,Diana Fu
• DOI: 10.1177/00104140211025544
• Published date: 01 September 2021
• Date: 01 September 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2021, Vol. 54(10) 1695–1721

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140211025544

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Ethnographic

Approaches to

Contentious Politics:

The What, How, and

Why

Diana Fu

1

and Erica S. Simmons

2

Abstract

How should we study contentious politics in an era rife with new forms of

contention, both in the United States and abroad? The introduction to this

special issue draws attention to one particularly crucial methodological tool in

the study of contention: political ethnography. It showcases the ways in which

ethnographic approaches can contribute to the study of contentious politics.

Specifically, it argues that “what,”“how,”and “why”questions are central to

the study of contention and that ethnographic methods are particularly well-

suited to answering them. It also demonstrates how ethnographic methods

push scholars to both expand the objects of inquiry and rethink what the

relevant units of analysis might be. By uncovering hidden processes, exploring

social meanings, and giving voice to unheard stories, ethnography and

“ethnography-plus”approaches contribute to the study of contention and to

comparative politics, writ large.

Keywords

contentious politics, political ethnography, qualitative methods, social

movements

1

Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

2

Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA

Corresponding Author:

Diana Fu, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St

George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 3G3, Canada.

Email: Diana.fu@utoronto.ca

How should we study contentious politics in an era rife with new forms of

contention, both in the United States and abroad? With the Black Lives Matter

and #MeToo movements rippling from the United States to localities across

the globe, mobilizations occurring from Russia to Peru, and civil conflicts

raging from Thailand to Syria, the study of contention ought to be at the heart

of comparative politics. There are, of course, diverse ways to study con-

tentious politics, as recent work on both repression and mobilization have

evidenced (e.g., Berman, 2020;Blaydes, 2018;Ekiert & Perry, 2020;Fu,

2018;Giugni & Grasso, 2019;Hassan, 2020;Mattingly, 2020;Mares &

Young, 2019;Nugent, 2020;Pan, 2020;Schatz, 2021;Simmons, 2016). The

introduction to this special issue draws attention to one particularly crucial

methodological tool in the study of contention: political ethnography. People

are at the heart of processes of contention. And an ethnographic approach

privileges people, focusing research and analysis on lived experiences.

Scholars cannot understand moments of mobilization or moments of qui-

escence without paying attention to how individuals and groups experience

processes of repression or mobilization.

The studies in this issue showcase the ways in which adopting ethno-

graphic approaches to varying degrees can contribute to the study of con-

tention. While there is no one agreed-upon definition of ethnography, most

(though certainly not all) ethnographic work involves participant observation,

which usually takes places through immersion in a field site.

1

This work is

often guided by an “ethnographic sensibility”(Pader, 2006;Schatz 2009) that

pushes scholars to see the world through the eyes of their interlocutors and

incorporate the processes through which actors ascribe meanings to their

social and political experiences. Each article in this issue is, to some degree,

ethnographic. Either alone or alongside other methods, each contribution

draws on one or more of the central strengths of ethnographic methods to help

uncover the processes at work during episodes of repression and/or mobi-

lization. Whether they are using in-depth, iterative interviews to challenge

assumptions about how people mobilize against authoritarian rule (Pearlman,

this issue) or against armed groups in civil war (Masullo, this issue), un-

covering hidden processes of resistance and co-optation through interpreting

public works of art (Lerner, this issue), or making sense of state responses to

mobilization through participant observation and reading sources with an

ethnographic sensibility (Simmons, this issue), each author challenges taken-

for-granted assumptions about the categories that make up the world by trying

to see them through the eyes of their interlocutors. Together, these articles

showcase how ethnographic approaches can be married with other methods to

pose new questions and to view familiar patterns of contention with a new

perspective.

In this introduction, we focus on the importance of ethnography in the

study of contentious politics, showing how ethnographic methods push us to

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