Comparison with an Ethnographic Sensibility

• Published in: PS, political science & politics political science & politics, 2017-01, Vol.50 (1), p.126-130
• Main Authors: Simmons, Erica S., Smith, Nicholas Rush
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Comparative analysis; Cultural Context; Ethnography; Methods; Observation; Participant Observation; Political science; Politics; Public Opinion; Qualitative research; Research methodology; Research Projects; Researchers; Scholars; Scientists; Studies; Symposium: Ethnography and Participant Observation: Political Science Research in this “Late Methodological Moment”; The Profession; Theater
• ISSN: 1049-0965; 1537-5935
• DOI: 10.1017/S1049096516002286

To what extent can an ethnographic sensibility enhance comparison? In recent years, there has been renewed interest in controlled comparisons in qualitative research designs within political science (e.g., Dunning 2012; Gisselquist 2014; Slater and Ziblatt 2013; Snyder 2001; Tarrow 2010). Broadly, the recent work on controlled comparison--an approach that emphasizes case selection based on either contrasting outcomes despite similar potentially explanatory characteristics or similar outcomes despite contrasting potentially explanatory characteristics--suggests that the method combines the best of both the qualitative and quantitative traditions. Controlled comparisons are useful, this literature argues, because they allow scholars to trace out dynamic political processes while accounting for the effects of possible confounding explanations. Such methodological moves, however, are not without cost. In particular, this approach to case selection can lead researchers to deemphasize context and, in the process, potentially diminish the greatest methodological strength of qualitative research: providing contextualized understandings of political processes. We contend that approaching comparison with an "ethnographic sensibility" (Pader 2006; Schatz 2009)--that is, being sensitive to how informants make sense of their worlds and incorporating meaning into our analyses--can strengthen comparative qualitative research. Adopting an ethnographic sensibility would enhance the quality of scholarly arguments by incorporating the processes through which actors ascribe meanings to their lived experiences and the political processes in which they are enmeshed. Because social-science arguments often involve accounts of individual actors' interests, ideas, and impressions, it is imperative to place such cognitive arguments in a broader cultural context. Adopting an ethnographic sensibility requires attention not only to that context but also to the political and social meanings that make it intelligible. This approach builds on recent scholarly efforts to embrace complexity in historical analysis (see Slater and Simmons 2010). However, it pushes us beyond the methods of difference and agreement that continue to guide much qualitative comparative work (for a discussion, see Slater and Ziblatt 2013) by asking scholars to make the complex meanings that often shape politics the object of inquiry--which is rare even in the best recent qualitative comparative work. This article i