Bringing Nuances Back: Teaching Fieldwork as an Immersive Experience

• In Event: TLC at APSA: Creating an Active Learning Environment through Assignments and Class Design

Abstract

Fieldwork in political science tends to be taught through a framework of binaries based on regime types (democracy/autocracy) or levels of economic development (developed/ developing countries). Despite the critical role of dichotomies in theory-building, their application to teaching fieldwork risks reducing the knowledge-building process to stereotypes in a period when misinformation is rife. In particular, this could have significant repercussions for knowledge production on non-Western regions, potentially even gatekeeping the types of research being conducted. This framing leaves little room for exploring a major value-added element of fieldwork, namely the contextual nuances that inform social interactions in diverse settings. Political science students are taught how to obtain access to actors and information from them, with little instruction on how to record and interpret the larger context in which interviews take place. That is, the cultural, historical, and social nuances involved in “being in the field.” Fieldwork and immersion – an approach that would reveal these contextual nuances – are largely regarded as separate endeavors as immersion is often relegated to ethnographic methods or other disciplines. Based on extensive fieldwork experiences in East and Southeast Asia, this paper explores how teaching fieldwork research requires pulling back the curtain and embracing the practical reality that all types of fieldwork involve some degree of an immersive experience regardless of discipline. We demonstrate that bringing nuances back shapes not only the strategies doctoral students can employ to gain access and information in the field but also to interpret their data after leaving the field.

Authors

• Kathrin Reed, Ursinus College

• Xinhui Jiang, Nanjing University