The Methods Café: An Innovative Idea for Methods Teaching at Conference Meetings

Abstract

Interpretive research methods of various sorts have long been used to study “the political,” but the full range of such methods is not widely known, and many are curious about what they entail. Others, who begin to use one or another of them, have questions about how to proceed. For those just learning about these methods, questions may be as basic as: “What does ethnomethodology mean?” “What is semiotic analysis?” “Are these approaches recognized as legitimate in political science?” Scholars engaging, or perhaps teaching, these methods might ask, e.g., “How do ethnographers overcome problems of accessing their field site, talking to strangers, and turning a year's worth of observational and interview notes into concise text?” We thank 2005 and 2006 Program Chairs Ron Schmidt and Val Martinez-Ebers and Executive Director Betty Moulds and Associate Director Elsa Favila at the Western Political Science Association, and Qualitative Methods 2006 Section Program Chairs Julia Lynch and Melani Cammett, and Michael Brintnall, Rob Hauck, Christina Marmor, and others on the conference organizing staff at APSA. Michael and Rob came to the Café at the Western in 2006 to see for themselves what it was that we were trying to do. We are grateful for their help in making it possible at APSA. And, of course, we thank all those colleagues who have contributed their time and thought to creating the Café with us, including Cecelia Lynch, who saw right at the beginning that it was a ‘café’ and came up with its definitive name.