Beyond participant observation: integrating ethnographic and quantitative research methods

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During the fellowship I will publish two single-author papers based on my PhD research, prepare a book proposal, train in experimental and quantitative research methods, and organise a workshop entitled 'Beyond Participant Observation' at the LSE. I will also attend national and international conferences to disseminate my findings, and conduct various impact-related activities in Nepal, where the research was conducted in the first place.The first of the papers which I will complete during the fellowship will help improve our understanding of identity politics and the situation of Dalits (previously known as 'untouchables') in contemporary Nepal. This country has undergone major political transformations in recent decades: the end of the Hindu monarchy and establishment of a secular, federal republic, a ten-year civil war, a tremendous rise in ethnic and cultural politics, and a fraught process of constitution writing. The 18-month ethnographic project which I conducted in Nepal shows how these rapid political changes have affected 'ordinary', non-politicised Dalits. The analysis of this material reveals how identity politics, while promoting inclusiveness, can in fact create new axes of exclusion. The second paper will investigate the cognitive and psychological processes that underpin caste-base discrimination and social stigmatisation more generally. It will focus in particular on a phenomenon known as 'psychological essentialism', a cognitive bias that has been studied extensively in empirical and developmental psychology and been shown to play an important role in driving racial stereotyping and discrimination in Western contexts. I argue that the same bias contributes other forms of social ostracising, including caste-based discrimination, and ask what social processes are likely to increase of decrease its effect.Besides allowing me to publish material based on my PhD, the fellowship will help me achieve the long-term goal of developing and promoting research methods that are currently under-utilised in social anthropology. In particular, my hope is to develop quantitative and experimental methods that are well-suited to study questions relating to the interplay between social organisation and human cognition. To this end, the fellowship includes a significant training component for myself, and the organisation of a workshop to bring together socio-cultural anthropologists who use non-traditionally ethnographic methods.I will undertake three research trips to disseminate my research to academic and non-academic audiences. The first will be for a five-member panel that I have co-organised for the yearly conference of the European Network for Psychological Anthropology (June 1-3, 2021), in which presenters (including myself) will consider the implications of recent findings in cognitive science for anthropological models of human behaviour. The second trip will be to Nepal, in July 2021. Besides presenting at the Annual Kathmandu Conference on Nepal and Himalayas, I will conduct various impact-related activities. These will include offering an intensive course in research methods for research students in Nepal, giving a public lecture, and organising a workshop in collaboration with a Dalit organisation in Kathmandu. My third trip will be to St-Andrews, where I will convene a panel the ASA conference to present the results of the workshop 'Beyond Participant Observation'.