Year-end Sale % OFF 
Abstract
Some of the most insightful work in the political economy of the world-system area has been produced by researchers whose extensive fieldwork offers them deep familiarity with people and locales. Few other methods are as useful to understand the impacts of structural change on daily life and the ways agents resist, alter, and shape emerging structures. Yet such structural fieldwork is marginalized by the over-reliance of pedagogical materials on social constructionist, social psychological, or interactionist perspectives and also in world-systems research and writing by the privileging of long durée historical or quantitative cross-national methods. This paper introduces the concept of structural fieldwork to describe a qualitative field methodology in which the researcher is self-consciously guided by considerations emerging out of macro-sociological theories. We identify four advantages of structural fieldwork: the illumination of powers multiple dimensions; examination of agency and its boundaries or limitations within broad political and economic structures; attention to nuances of change and durability, spatial and temporal specificities, and processes of change and durability; and challenging and extending social theory. These advantages are illustrated in select examples from existing literature and by discussion of the two authors fieldwork-based research. The paper concludes that explicit attention to fieldwork may strengthen political economy and world-systems research and also de-marginalize political economy informed by structural fieldwork.
Highlights
Some of the most insightful work in the political economy of the world-system area has been produced by fieldworkers displaying deep and often enduring familiarity with people and locales
Burawoy et al (2000) provide us with a series of essays on globally grounded field research. Whether it is an advantaged set of migrants from Kerala, India, whose successful migration from the periphery has everything to do with changing occupational requisites in the core (George 2000), to the devastating impacts of globalization on shipyard workers (Blum 2000), to new careers and opportunities created by the newly privileged place of information technology on the occupational structure in the US and Ireland (Ó Riain 2000), Burawoy and his students grapple with methodological difficulties emerging from field research on the impacts of political economic change and world-systemic dynamics on workers and families
We have sought to respond to the marginalization of ethnography, even that ironically imposed by its practitioners
Summary
Some of the most insightful work in the political economy of the world-system area has been produced by fieldworkers displaying deep and often enduring familiarity with people and locales. Some recent contributions to historical and world-systemic sociology, offer powerful suggestions and exemplars that may be useful to a fuller understanding of structural fieldwork.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
