Studying Up: Four Modalities, Two Challenges

In her 1973 article “up the anthropologist” Laura Nader called on anthropologists to engage in critical studies of the relationship between powerful institutions and the broader society, using a “vertical slice” approach. But Nader worried that participant observation was hard in the context of studying up, and yet it has been presented as definitive of anthropology’s methodology. This article discusses four methodological strategies for studying up in the light of this concern: insider ethnography; covert ethnography; remote ethnography; and adapted participant observation. The first two have intellectual or ethical liabilities. The last is increasingly normalized. Going forward, anthropologists studying up face two obstacles: first, the increasingly totalizing hold of corporate and government workplaces over their employees, even when they are not at work; and, second, university institutional review boards (irb s) concerned to avoid conflictual or critical research.

How to think about people who don’t want to be studied: Further reflections on studying up

It is now routine for anthropologists to study those who exercise power and control wealth and status in any number of societies. Implicit in anthropology’s long-standing commitment to apprehending societies in their totality, and explicit in the call to study up, paying attention to power is just one of the routine things that anthropologists do in the course of their fieldwork. That said, many theoretical and ethical norms in the discipline are calibrated to allow researchers to both know about and protect those with relatively little power who made up much of anthropology’s original topical area of interests. By contrast, studying people who exercise power entails special ethical and theoretical consideration. This article enumerates some of those considerations, and suggests that anthropologists need to have coherent theories of social action in addition to theories of social meaning. The article also suggests that some canonical disciplinary ethical norms are inappropriate for the study of the powerful for empirical and practical reasons.

Introduction: Ethnographies of power and the powerful

This introduction suggests that anthropology often assumes that the people anthropologists work with are relatively powerless. Due to this default, anthropologists tend to design their research and theorizing to reflect a relatively powerless other. We suggest that the accumulated scholarship on studying up, that is, studying those who structure the lives of many others, offers more accurate ways to theorize power and its exercise as partial and situated, as well as more plural and productive ways to imagine anthropological practice and ethics. We also suggest that this line of thinking gives us some ground to speak to the larger direction of the discipline.

Beyond the Church and the Poor: Expanding the Subject of Ethnographic Theology

The use of ethnography for theological inquiry is no longer novel. Yet, as the introduction to this special issue indicates, the ethnographic turn in Christian theology is animated by distinct postliberal and liberationist trajectories, each with their own theological presumptions and methodological aims. Should the future development of this turn favour one trajectory over another? This paper explores this question in conversation with Todd Whitmore’s Imitating Christ in Magwi: An Anthropological Theology. Through a sustained engagement with Imitating Christ in Magwi, I unearth both postliberal and liberationist inheritances to show that Whitmore’s text exceeds a postliberal-liberationist binary. I then ask what the dual inheritance of his work signifies for the future of the ethnographic turn. Drawing from cultural anthropology’s mode of ‘studying up,’ I suggest that the turn should orient itself more broadly to the care of our common life by expanding attention to subjects with power.

“Hanging Out” while Studying “Up”: Doing Ethnographic Fieldwork in International Relations

This article advances a methodological argument on how to do ethnographic fieldwork amid social elites and inaccessible bureaucracies in international politics. Instead of participant observation or semi-structured interviews, the article proposes “hanging out” as an alternative strategy to generate immersion and ethnographic insight. While the ethnographer studying “down” is arguably always “hanging out” (the village as the exemplary mise-en-scene of this genre), this technique takes a more defined form when studying “up” elites. Specifically, hanging out when studying “up” is a strategy where the fieldworker commits to a period of continuous residence amid members of a community; engages in ludic, informal, and often sociable interactions outside or at the sidelines of their professional habitats; and participates in a range of activities where building rapport is as important as the primary goals of the research. I illustrate this methodological strategy and its payoffs by reflecting upon a year of fieldwork among the diplomats and bureaucrats of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations—an informal, quiet, and often sub rosa diplomatic project run by a band of mostly authoritarian states in Southeast Asia. This article contributes to debates on the viability of ethnographic fieldwork in international relations (IR); advances a methodological corrective to fieldwork prescriptions in new micropolitical studies of practice, interactions, and emotions in IR; and offers a practical illustration of what studying “up” looks like in diplomacy and international politics.

Para cima, Antropólogos: perspectivas ganhas em estudar os de cima

Neste ensaio, descreverei algumas das oportunidades que os antropólogos têm de “estudar os de cima” (studying up) em sua própria sociedade, na expectativa de fomentar mais discussões sobre o porquê estudamos o que estudamos (NADER, 1964). Os antropólogos têm uma grande contribuição para a nossa compreensão dos processos pelos quais o poder e a responsabilidade são exercidos nos Estados Unidos. Além disso, há uma certa urgência para esse tipo de antropologia preocupada com o poder (Cf. WOLF, 1969), pois a qualidade de vida e as nossas próprias vidas em si mesmas dependem do modo como os cidadãos compreendem aqueles que moldam e realmente controlam as estruturas institucionais. O estudo do homem é confrontado com uma situação sem precedentes: nunca antes tão poucos, por suas ações e inações, tiveram o poder de vida e morte sobre tantos membros da espécie humana. Apresento três razões para “estudar os de cima”: seu efeito estimulante e articulador para muitos estudantes, adequação científica e relevância democrática do trabalho científico. Finalmente, considerarei alguns obstáculos e objeções frequentes e tentarei respondê-los.

Ethnographier la blanchité dans la migration: quelle éthique pour l’étude des dominants?

A partir de una encuesta etnográfica realizada sobre los “migrantes privilegiados” franceses, también denominados como “expatriados”, en Abu Dhabi, este artículo analiza cómo ciertos principios éticos fundamentales de la investigación – como por ejemplo el consentimiento por parte de las personas encuestadas y la transparencia del investigador/a – pueden resultar problemáticos cuando se trata de un estudio en torno a sujetos privilegiados y dominantes. La antropología, como disciplina, y la etnografía, como método, nacieron y se desarrollaron en un contexto colonial. Como corolario de esta historia colonial, se ha estructurado una "autoridad etnográfica" exotizante, alterizante, la cual es coherente con una ética que presupone la alteridad y la vulnerabilidad de los encuestados. Si bien la tendencia al "studying up" en las ciencias sociales ha supuesto una reconsideración de nuevas problemáticas éticas ligadas a la investigación, este replanteamiento solamente se lleva a cabo en circunstancias excepcionales. Ahora bien, tal "excepcionalización" proteiforme se basa en una representación "asociológica" del poder, sea por moralismo, sea por estado-centrismo.

Para cima, Antropólogos: perspectivas ganhas em estudar os de cima

Neste ensaio, descreverei algumas das oportunidades que os antropólogos têm de “estudar os de cima” (studying up) em sua própria sociedade, na expectativa de fomentar mais discussões sobre o porquê estudamos o que estudamos (NADER, 1964). Os antropólogos têm uma grande contribuição para a nossa compreensão dos processos pelos quais o poder e a responsabilidade são exercidos nos Estados Unidos. Além disso, há uma certa urgência para esse tipo de antropologia preocupada com o poder (Cf. WOLF, 1969), pois a qualidade de vida e as nossas próprias vidas em si mesmas dependem do modo como os cidadãos compreendem aqueles que moldam e realmente controlam as estruturas institucionais. O estudo do homem é confrontado com uma situação sem precedentes: nunca antes tão poucos, por suas ações e inações, tiveram o poder de vida e morte sobre tantos membros da espécie humana. Apresento três razões para “estudar os de cima”: seu efeito estimulante e articulador para muitos estudantes, adequação científica e relevância democrática do trabalho científico. Finalmente, considerarei alguns obstáculos e objeções frequentes e tentarei respondê-los.