The Relevance of Fieldwork: from the United States to Nepal

• In Event: "Bringing Fieldwork Back In-" To Political Science Research

Abstract

Political Science has been moving away from “area studies” and fieldwork-based inquiries. Simultaneously, the discipline has struggled to justify its existence and maintain funding. To date, few have considered these to be anything but independent trends; yet, increasing evidence suggests that fieldwork can yield accurate and compelling results, thus increasing research relevance and the case for funding. Consider coverage of the 2016 US presidential race. Scholars sitting remotely from their subjects ran complex algorithms and determined that there was a high probability that Hillary Clinton would win the presidency; many of them were wrong. Meanwhile, Kathy Cramer spent nearly a decade embedded in the rural Midwest asking voters about government. After listening to rural voters “in the environments they hang out in,” she ended up writing “The Politics of Resentment,” a book that looks prescient now, but received little attention when published. Highlighting this and other cases, including some from my own fieldwork, I argue that political scientists should reflect upon their zeal for the latest methodological fad and consider instead an entirely different paradigm: use of methods most likely to yield accurate results in a given context. Quantitative methods are often effective, but only when used with deep knowledge of context.

Author

• Susan L. Ostermann, University of Notre Dame