Research Methods in Critical Security Studies, 2nd Edition

8 Ethnography

Philippe M. Frowd

DOI: 10.4324/9781003108016-10

Introduction

Ethnography is the analysis of culture and context through interviews, participant observation, and discourse analysis. While it is strongly rooted in anthropology, ethnography as “thick description” (Geertz 1973: 6) has found fertile ground in International Relations (IR) in which questions of identity and social practice have become primary sites of analysis. To practise thick description, in Geertz’s words, is “to be holistic, and contextualize specific sets of language, practices, and habits into a recognizable pattern” (1973: 6).

To think of ethnography as a method of collecting specific data from a complex world is to overlook the sensibility and politics that ...