Political sociologists have typically studied the state as a self-enclosed institution hovering above civil society. A few objects in particular-relationally approached-merit more frequent consideration in urban ethnography: the lived experience of inequalities, including that of the urban environment itself, and the political in urban milieu-both state practice in its manifold forms, including its informal and clandestine aspects, and collective action. We draw examples from inside and outside the United States to both deprovincialize the conversation and elucidate particular voids that result, not from social facts on the ground, but from our ethnographic lenses-and what they allow us to see and not see. urban ethnography, could enrich the conversation and help construct better, more interesting, less parochial objects. Here, we make a few suggestions about potential relational objects of investigation that, having not been at the center of U.S. When we shift our focus to the process of constructing our scientific objects of inquiry, it becomes clear that relational ethnographies construct radically different objects than the (much more common) substantialist approaches. And he roots that discussion in the often overlooked yet essential practice of the construction of the scientific object. In that essay, Desmond makes the case for relational ethnography: to move the substantive and analytic focus of ethnography from groups and places to relations, conflicts, boundaries, and processes.
#Nodebox urban ethnography series
They are constructed, as Desmond (2014) recently reminded us-resurrecting the obscure but essential The Craft of Sociology-with a series of theoretical preoccupations in mind. Scientific objects are conquered and constructed. Their conquest is a struggle against commonsensical assumptions, presumptions, and preconceptions about the social world.
Social scientific objects are not found but conquered against “the illusion of immediate knowledge” (Bourdieu et al.
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