Ethnography and international relations: situating recent trends, debates and limitations from an interdisciplinary perspective

Jean Michel Montsion

doi:10.1186/s40711-018-0079-4

Abstract

As a relatively recent academic discipline, international relations engage with ethnography in specific ways, especially since its ethnographic turn starting in the mid-1990s. Conceived as a methodology that may open up the field to new perspectives on studying world politics, ethnography is deployed by critical IR scholars in order to ground everyday life as a credible source of knowledge about the international realm. Despite disciplinary and logistical challenges, recent attempts to integrate ethnography into IR can be found in practice-focused research, autoethnography and multi-sited studies. Following an examination of how ethnography has been interpreted and utilised in these cases, the paper will highlight commonalities with debates in other fields, especially social anthropology, to offer new avenues for a richer engagement with ethnography in IR.

Highlights

The discipline of international relations (IR) has a relatively short academic history
Whether through the recent scholarship associated with practice-focused research, autoethnography or multi-sited studies, IR’s plural engagement with ethnography is mostly limited to a commitment to bringing representations of everyday life into the study of world politics
By providing recent accounts of the interpretations and uses of ethnography in IR, this paper unpacks how the methodology is understood within this academic discipline and the specific challenges that come with conducting ethnographies of the international, from the lack of training for IR scholars to disciplinary and logistical obstacles

Summary

Introduction

The discipline of international relations (IR) has a relatively short academic history. By positioning themselves within these five debates, mainstream approaches to IR emerge as problem-solving perspectives, with the aim of providing foreign policy advice to state officials and utilising quantitative methodologies, based on rationalist and positivist precepts. In order to study the unique structures and processes that emerge from state interactions, scientific approaches are seen here as helpful in explaining the big picture, predicting what could happen and offering concrete advice to practitioners. Critical scholarship in IR is inspired by post-positivist and reflexive research approaches. Rather than trying to explain world politics in reductive ways, critical approaches attempt to understand the complexities and nuances of IR, including

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