Doing Fieldwork in Centres of Power

Jonathan Chibois is an assistant researcher in political anthropology at the Laboratory of Political Anthropology (LAP). He holds a PhD from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Samuel Shapiro is a PhD candidate in anthropology at Université Laval in Canada.

List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Doing Fieldwork in Centres of Power

Jonathan Chibois and Samuel Shapiro

Part 1 Where are the Boundaries of Institutions?

1 Negotiating and Influencing Public Policy in Jordan: The Parliament as a Point of Entry

Camille Abescat

2 From Offline Brussels to Online Dispersion. Where is the European Parliament? A Proposal to Explore a Complex, Multi-Dimensional and Multi-Site Fieldwork

Sandrine Roginsky

3 Doing Political Fieldwork in Chinese Authoritarianism, Institutionalization of Deliberation and Consultation

Rongxin Li

Part 2 Must Fieldworkers Choose Between Being Insiders and Outsiders?

4 Parliamentary Ethnography: The Challenges of Fieldwork for an Insider in the Senate of Argentina

Laura Ferreño

5 Navigating Overlapping Methodological and Contextual Difficulties: ‘Following’ Women Politicians in Serbia and Kosovo/a”

Gordana Subotic

6 The Activist Researcher: Negotiating Responsibility for Land-Grabbing in the United Nations

Birgit Müller

Part 3 What Collective Research Do to Fieldwork?

7 The Citizens’ Climate Convention: A Tale of an Ethnography of a Deliberative Arena Under Pressure

Simon Baeckelandt

8 Collaborative Reflexive Inquiry Into Parliaments: Ethnographers Negotiating During Research on Politics

Cristiane Bernardes, Andrea Cornwall, Emma Crewe & Telma Hoyler

9 Ethnography of Parliamentary Constituencies: Navigating the Sensitivities of Political Research in Bangladesh

Zahir Ahmed

Part 4 Looking Back: Reflecting on Long-Term Research Trajectories

10. Getting to the Soul of Parliaments: Using Multi-Methods to Understand the Parliamentary Ecosystem

by Cristina Leston-Bandeira

11 From One Institution to Another: Three Investigations into Power Structures

Irène Bellier