DIIS Working Paper

Towards a 'Global Political Ethnography'

New ways of studying global policy regimes are emerging

At a time when changing world orders, new actors, and new technologies transform global policy regimes, this DIIS Working Paper argues that a methodology for studying such regimes ethnographically seem to be emerging across various disciplines. The purpose of the paper is twofold: firstly, we seek to contribute to the dialogue on ethnographic and practice-oriented approaches that is growing across disciplines, from anthropology to political science and International Relations, and provide some common ground for this dialogue. Secondly, by reviewing an extensive literature, we focus on methodological discussions con­cerning how to approach the highly complex global policy process­es that are currently developing. What are the appropriate empirical scale(s) and units of analysis of a global political ethnography? How do we identify sites, encounters, situations and materials where ethnographic approaches can generate dif­ferent and maybe more critical insights than more conventional approaches? And how are the voices and practices of actors operating at different scales and in dif­ferent sites balanced and connect­ed in the policy analysis?

The Working Paper is part of a DIIS initiative on Global Political Ethnography.

DIIS Experts

Finn Stepputat
Peace and violence
Emeritus Researcher
+45 32698685
Jessica Larsen
Foreign policy and diplomacy
Senior Researcher
+45 93906099
none
Global political ethnography
A methodological approach to studying global policy regimes