Studying Down to Study Up: Insights from an Ethnography of Technoscience Circulation

• In Event: 472 - Regular Session. Technology

Abstract

What insights can be gained through an ethnography of processes (Glaeser 2010) using the extended case method (Burawoy 1998, 2000)? In this paper I discuss what it means to "study up" for ethnographers from the global north who are conducting research in the global south. Additionally, I outline a process by which the extended case method can be used for multi-sited research that traces technoscience circulation through a network of relations. I first started this research project by looking into cataract disease, the predominant cause of avoidable blindness (blindness that is preventable or curable). Later, my ethnographic fieldwork involved 10.25 months as a participant observer in eye hospitals within the global south in Nepal, India and Kenya. I found that there are unique problems and possibilities for ethnographers from the global north studying elite professionals in the global south. The insights from this work may be useful to such ethnographers as they consider the ethics of conducting research within the asymmetric global divide(s) of power, and the practical steps required to select field sites and create theory in a global ethnography.

Author

• Logan Dawn April Williams, Michigan State University