III.3. Ethnography and participant observation

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Diana Fu
University of Toronto
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Apr 08, 2016 10:39 am

Reporting Ethnographic Data in Journals

PostMon Nov 14, 2016 8:16 pm

Dear Colleagues

I'm a political ethnographer studying state control and grassroots contention in contemporary China. My book project, "Mobilizing Without the Masses in China" is based on 2 years of political ethnography inside labor organizations in China. For one of my publications, "Disguised Collective Action in China," I was asked by the journal editors at Comparative Political Studies to disclose my data in an online methods appendix. I spent several weeks writing up an extensive appendix that discusses ethnography and its advantages as well as limitations in the context of my study. I had to think hard about how to use terminology such as "sampling bias" and "generalizability" as it applies (or rather doesn't apply) to ethnography. It was challenging. The editors did not ask me to disclose field notes but did request an interview appendix.


Article: https://www.academia.edu/27513500/Disgu ... a-CPS_2016
Methods Appendix: Attached to this post

I will be working with the CPS editors to do a special issue on using political ethnography to study contention/repression in comparative perspective. If anyone has suggestions or relevant papers, please contact me directly.

Best Wishes,

Diana Fu
The University of Toronto
Political Science Department

Fu CPS DCA Methods Appendix.pdf
(579.48 KiB) Downloaded 764 times

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Jillian Schwedler
Hunter College and the GC, CUNY
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Sep 01, 2016 3:26 pm

Re: Reporting Ethnographic Data in Journals

PostFri Dec 09, 2016 10:32 am

Hi, Diana,

Thanks for sharing. Can you say more about how you felt about the final result, the methods appendix online? Did you feel that it added significantly to expanding the ability for others to understand your research? You mentioned that you struggled to adapt more positivist and statistical language to your research, was that something the editors requested or was it your own effort to try to help others understand your work? I am interested to know how these processes are working in practice, and how you felt about the results.

Jillian

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Dara Strolovitch
Princeton University
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat Apr 09, 2016 3:41 pm

Re: Reporting Ethnographic Data in Journals

PostWed Dec 21, 2016 3:03 pm

JSchwedler wrote:Hi, Diana,

Thanks for sharing. Can you say more about how you felt about the final result, the methods appendix online? Did you feel that it added significantly to expanding the ability for others to understand your research? You mentioned that you struggled to adapt more positivist and statistical language to your research, was that something the editors requested or was it your own effort to try to help others understand your work? I am interested to know how these processes are working in practice, and how you felt about the results.

Jillian


I would really appreciate hearing more about this as well.

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