Rethinking Political Theory with Ethnographic Sensitivity: a Moral Dimension

In recent years, there is an increase in political theorists engaging in original ethnographic research. This has been coined by Zacka et al. (2021) as ‘political theory with ethnographic sensibility’: the idea is to approach ethnography less as a method (participant observation) than as a sensibility, as generative of theoretical insights. Ethnography can uncover new topics for normative inquiry, shed lights on what meanings people associate with political values, and attune us to forms of otherwise hidden harms (Longo and Zacka, 2019). However, there is an important objection to this trend based on disciplinary division of labor: given that the participatory observation part of political theory projects is often less in-depth than similar anthropology or sociology projects (and that political theorists are often less well-trained in ethnography compared to anthropologists and sociologists), why not just read existing anthropology and sociology research on relevant topics? What are the additional values of doing original ethnography for political theory projects? More broadly, how should political theorists who do ethnographic work think about how their original ethnography relates to existing ethnographic works by anthropologists and sociologists? One way of answering this objection comes from Longo and Zacka (2019), who argue that theorists approach the field from a particular hermeneutic vantage point, which is different from anthropologists or sociologists. In this paper, I provide a different argument in favor of theorists engaging in ethnography. I argue that there is a moral dimension to adopting ethnographic sensitivity in political theory projects that aim to be action-guiding, especially projects on political ethics. There is something morally problematic about writing about how others should conduct their affairs, without ever experiencing what they go through. Without the experience of what others go through, writing about political ethics can be both elitist and can easily lead to a project that lacks contextual depth. This provides an answer to the objection on division of labor outlined above: Reading secondary empirical evidence is important, but it cannot, and should not be taken to, replace experiencing things by oneself and putting oneself in other’s shoes. So far, my argument does not require one to explicitly do ethnography as part of one’s project, as opposed to, e.g., volunteer as an activist in one’s spare time before or while writing about activist ethics. However, explicitly doing ethnography in one’s research allows one to reflect on the theoretical issues (e.g., the political ethics of activism) while engaging in related real-life work (e.g., activism work), and be transparent about how one’s experience forms the basis for one’s theorizing. The transparency in one’s reflexive theorising is important for making a political theory project more persuasive to theorists as well as non-theorists.