Global ethnography

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Gille, Z. & Ó Riain, S. (2002) Global ethnography. Annual Review of Sociology, Vol 28, pp. 271-295. Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3069243

Contents 1 Intro 1.1 Three perspectives on globalization 2 Reimagining the social in global ethnography 2.1 Disembedding the social? 2.2 The social as flow or network 2.3 The social as transnational 2.4 The social as border zone 2.5 The social as place-making projects 2.5.1 Massey's locality, global sense of place (1994) 2.5.2 Albrow's sociospheres (1997) 2.5.3 And the ethnographer...? 3 Global ethnography 3.1 Global forces 3.2 Connections 3.3 Imaginations 4 Issues in global ethnography 4.1 Extending in space: ethnography across sites and scales 4.1.1 Methodological implications 4.2 Extending in time: From context to history 4.2.1 Archives? 4.3 Transformations of ethnographers: How do relationship with those we study change? 5 Conclusion

Intro

• Globalization introduces methodological challenges (271)
• Ethnography is based on "being there"
• But where is the global "there"? (272)
  • Within networks, flows?
  • Transnational social formations
  • At the borders?

Three perspectives on globalization

• Forces
• Connections
• Imaginations

Reimagining the social in global ethnography

• Ethnography doesn't rely on fixed, comparable units of analysis
• This may make it well-suited to adapting to globalization

Disembedding the social?

• Conventional approaches assume the "nation is a container for everything within it" (273)
• World-systems theory see "subunits" as nations in relation to each other (273)
• Globalization in a def derived from Mato, 1997, increases significance of...
  • Trans-local relations
  • Local-global
  • Global-global
  • At the expense of national-national (273)
• Giddens (1991), globalization "disembeds" the local, space no longer matters (274)
• Albrow (1995), social relations "disembedded" from space, sociality freed from state control (274)

The social as flow or network

• Flows of people, info, goods, signs (Lash & Urry, 1994) (274)
• Scapes, cultural formations around finance, media, ideology, tech, people (Appadurai, 1990)
• Network of networks, Hannerz (1992)
• Networks are not all-encompassing, flows have an inside/outside. To be outside is disadvantage. (Castells, 1997)
• Perhaps there is a "new geography" or need to "draw new maps" (274)
• These analyses tend to lack consideration for...
  • Agency
  • Power
  • Sense-making (275)
• Places and networks "constitute one another", need not be opposed (275)

The social as transnational

• Transnational studies concern various border-crossings, by people, texts, discourses, representations (Schiller, 1997)
  • Some understand "transnational" (migrants, people) in opposition to "globalization" (states, corporations) (275)
• Challenge to retain historical perspective
  • Historically local activities may shift to global/flows, y vice versa (276)

The social as border zone

• Distinct "cultural worlds" in conversation with one another (not simply global/local) (Marcus & Fischer, 1986)
• "Border" metaphors not without problems:
  • Imply a self-contained territory with identifiable boundaies

The social as place-making projects

• Place-making projects, combining flows, transnationalism, borders
  • Sites for ethnographic inquiry (277)

Massey's locality, global sense of place (1994)

• Places are not static
• Places do not have simple boundaries (inside/outside)
• Identity of a place is not homogenous
• Places are unique, distinct mixture of local, wider social relations (277)

Albrow's sociospheres (1997)

• Local is fluid, dynamic / not a fixed !flow
• People living in the same neighborhood may have far-reaching social lives (277)

And the ethnographer...?

• Places are where "ongoing creation, institutionalization, and contestation of global networks, connections, and borders" (278)
• Ethnographer is an "interrogator" of place-making projects (278)

Global ethnography

Global forces

• Most forces ethnographies begin with a construction of an external force, overarching structure (e.g., capitalism) (280)
• This structure is then examined "at work" in a site
  • From the point of view of people "caught up" and unable to drive these forces (280)
• Ethnography complicates views of globalization as purely exploitative global capitalism (280)
  • Often at the intersection of a variety of forces (capitalism+science, capitalism+modernity) (280-1)

Connections

• Tend to focus on the agency of social actors (281)
  • Often start from a specific strategy, community, place-making project
• Transnational social movements, theory travels through and is transformed by the transnational process (282)
• Opportunity: how do global connections produce global forces? "Agency from above." (283)
• Connections literature does not foreclose work on ethnographic work in specific places
  • e.g. Lin, . (1998) Reconstructing chinatown

Imaginations

• The local actively participates in public discourse about what globalization might look like (283)
• Ethnographers tend to gravitate toward social movements but
  • How do elites produce their imaginations and from where do these imaginations derive power? (285)

Issues in global ethnography

• Ethnographic approach to globalization requires understanding locally/socially/culturally how people understand the place of their locality in the global scheme of things, and the actions they take to shape that place (285)
  • Choice of site is highly political (285)

Extending in space: ethnography across sites and scales

• Multi-sited ethnography, designed around chains/paths/conjunctions/juxtapositions of locations
  • Ethnographer establishes physical presence in each
  • Making explicit, logical connections among them (286)
  • Marcus. (1998) Ethnography through thick and thin
• Construction, connecting sites by following people, objects, metaphors, conflicts, biographies (286)
  • Finding traces, clues
• But sociologists will resist construction only by the logic of an ethnographer
  • There are extant social relations between/within sites and they must guide the selection of sites (287)

Methodological implications

• More interviews, history, tracing networks
• Less time being "on site" (287)

Extending in time: From context to history

• Marcus' multi-sited ethnography does not account for changes, dynamism over time (Gille, 2001) (287)
• Ethnography in globalization "requires the historicization of the locality" (288)
• "Even macrohistorical processess - building of states, making of revolutions [are] rooted in the meaningful practices of people, great and small" (Comaroffs, 1992) (288)
• Historiography may defy conventions re: place, "the field" might be a period in time with many spatial manifestations (Des Chene, 1997) (288)

Archives?

• Des Chenes treats archives as sites
• Comaroffs see archives as collections of traces for reconstructing a past scene (288)

Transformations of ethnographers: How do relationship with those we study change?

• Subject position of a global ethnographer "fraught with difficulties" (289)
  • Marcus claims multi-sites ethnography is activism (289)
  • "Ethnographer-activist" (289)
• Ethnographer with connections across multiple groups is both "valuable resource" but "potentially dangerous ... spy" (290)
• Relationships must be maintained that are contradictory or even conflictual (290)
• "Less clear ... than it seemed in the past" for whom the ethnographer should speak

Conclusion

"The place-bound site becomes a platform from which a variety of place-making projects can be investigated." (291)