State of the field: What can political ethnography tell us about anti-politics and democratic disaffection?

State of the field: What can political ethnography tell us about anti-politics and democratic disaffection?
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现状:关于反政治和民主不满,政治民族志可以告诉我们什么?

DOI:
10.1111/1475-6765.12270
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发表时间:
2018
影响因子:
5.3
通讯作者:
BOSWELL J
BOSWELL J
中科院分区:
法学1区
文献类型:
--
作者:
BOSWELL J

文献摘要

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这篇文章采用并重新发明了人种学的方法,以揭示统治精英们做了什么,以及他们如何应对公众的不满。尽管关于公民对执政精英(需求方面)的态度的研究很多,但关于精英如何解释和回应公众不满(供应方面)的研究很少。这里认为,人种志是收集供应方数据的最佳可用研究方法。这篇文章解决了政治学中关于人种学方法及其好处的长期刻板印象,并强调了当代人种学的创新和多样化实践是如何完美地适合于揭示精英政治的“黑匣子”。潜在的回报是通过参考政治学学术边缘的精英民族志的重要例子来论证的。这些丰富的研究表明,人们重新定位了如何理解公众不满的驱动因素,以及政治精英在加剧愤世嫉俗和失望情绪中所扮演的角色。文章最后指出,接受精英民族志对该学科有好处,既可以使解释不满的复杂动态的方法工具包多样化,也可以更好地参与关于政治体制的新一轮公开辩论。
This article adopts and reinvents the ethnographic approach to uncover what governing elites do, and how they respond to public disaffection. Although there is significant work on the citizens’ attitudes to the governing elite (the demand side) there is little work on how elites interpret and respond to public disaffection (the supply side). It is argued here that ethnography is the best available research method for collecting data on the supply side. The article tackles longstanding stereotypes in political science about the ethnographic method and what it is good for, and highlights how the innovative and varied practices of contemporary ethnography are ideally suited to shedding light into the ‘black box’ of elite politics. The potential pay‐off is demonstrated with reference to important examples of elite ethnography from the margins of political science scholarship. The implications from these rich studies suggest a reorientation of how one understands the drivers of public disaffection and the role that political elites play in exacerbating cynicism and disappointment. The article concludes by pointing to the benefits to the discipline in embracing elite ethnography both to diversify the methodological toolkit in explaining the complex dynamics of disaffection, and to better enable engagement in renewed public debate about the political establishment.