BURAWOY (2000). Introduction for the global/local

 How can ethnography be global?

Classical anthropology made and Education talked about the enclosure of the village, the isolation of the tribe. Studies of ritual and routine, custom and law,  were irredeemably Local.

By convention global ethnography can only be an oxymoron. In fact, this is a book from conventions!

1. A THEORETICAL IMPOSSIBILITY?

2. THE INTROVERSION OF THE CHICAGO SCHOOL

3. THE EXTROVERSION OF THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL

4. IN BERKELY WITH THE CASE METHOD

5. FORGES, CONNECTIONS, AND IMAGINATION.

6. BEYOND THE NATION.

1) A theoretical impossibility?

Nowadays the world is polarized between the network society and the marginalized populations.

If ethnography has any place, it is irrevocably LOCAL, buried in back holes, or looked at in real virtuality. In either case, there is no exit, no way of climbing out to the other world. Capitalism serve t overcome its crises by producing more thing, more rapidly and by turning consumers into automatons.

Speaking about global or local ethnography,...In 1930, the science of sociology was conterminous with ethnography: Chicago School preeminence and social surveys were associated with raking reforms. A trajectory of ethnography within anthropology in the early decades of s. XX (Malinowski). The scientific move in anthropology during 20 decades from their COLONIAL and CAPITALIST determinations.

By contrast. it begins with a vision of The Polish Peasant(1850), living within an array of the rural primary group of family was the most important. Its depiction of social change is reminiscent of Durkheim's account of the transition from mechanical to organic Solidarity.

It is true that the Polish Peasant contract to Malinowski!

The Polish Peasant was a global ethnography without a theory of globalization. Such theories were available by some authors but nothing could have been further from the liberal pragmatism of Chicago school sociology.

Blumer´s critique of The Polish Peasant enunciated a conception of science as Inductive, as routed in and emergent from the data. It would become the foundation of "grounded theory", which took ethnography into.

2) The introversion of Chicago School( world capitalism, colonial history).

According to Durkheim, urbanization brought increases in moral density, impelling competition and the differentiation on the basics of Adaptation to the environment. In adopting these ideas as their own, the Chicago Schol founded the field of human ecology- the study of the division of the city into natural areas, each performing distinctive functions for the whole.

The methodological lesson, searching for transhistorical laws obscured real history (1920-30)Depression, ethnic associations could no longer protect their communities and particularistic identities. 

Natural history becomes history out of context and after World War II, the Chicago department and Chicago Sociology was taking a very different face from the East coast and Deductive theorizing of structural functionalism (the Chicago exposed the subterranean world of institutions like prisons, asylum, hospitals, concentration camps). Goldner underlined the importance of flexibility so effectively obscured by Chicago´s school´s focus on social control.

3) The extroversion of the Manchester school (Livingstone Institute, Rhodesia).

If  "the polish peasant" in Europe and America was the founding classic for the Chicago School, then Godfrey Wilson´s "the economics of detribalization in Northern Rhodesia", published in 41-42, is the forerunner of the Manchester School of Social Anthropology.

Bosh studies set out from small-scale peasant or tribal societies in a state of natural equilibrium that is disturbed from the outside! While Thomas takes off the Global connection and imagination, Wilson explores global forces the tribal economy. 

Thomas focused on the contrary forces of social disorganization and transnational civic aggregation in the Polish American community of Chicago. Wilson hones in on the raw adaptation of western consumption in clothes, drinks, food, etc.

Manchester 4 Innovations;

-first, their accounts of life highlighted Social Progress

-second, changes, in theory, dictated changes in fieldwork technique

-third, attention to the wider context and discrepant contradictions of African society. (contradictions aa the gap between practice and norm.

-four, urbanization or industrialization would detribalize rural areas

The theoretical frameworks of the 2 schools, Chicago - Manchester, however, could not be more different!

-Where Park, drew analogies from plant ecology, Blackman was influenced by Marxism.

-Where the Chicago school focused on the ethnic Adaptation and the Functionality of Natural areas, the Manchester school began from the Clase relations of Colonial-Capitalism.

The world in which the Chicago sociologist and Manchester anthropologist were different:

                                           Welfare State                   Imperial Domination 

                                            Social drama                     Asimilation

4) In Berkeley University with The case method.

Compared to Chicago, Berkeley sociology was much more hospitable compared Chicago:

1)there was a long history of comparative and historical INQUIRY, stretching doing by Schurman.

2)On the other hand, there was a deep commitment to ethnography from Chicago to Berkeley (Laura Enriquez)

To the south, the contrasted the success of Chinese economy/Russian market reforms, focusing on National Factor and boundaries!

Participant Observation____Case method:DIMENSIONS.

1D- Extension of the observer into the world of the participant.

2D-Extension of observation over time and space.

3D- Extending out from Micro processes to Macro processes

4D-Extension of theory: Normalization!

5) Forces, connections, and imaginations.: Dimensions.

We can engage each of the 4 dimensions says of the extended CASE METHOD but any given study will inevitably focus on one or two.

Ethnography unbound focused on the 4 dimensions, the elaboration, and reconstruction of theory.  In effect some authors are problematizing the 3 dimensions of the extended case method, the extension:

-from Micro to Macro

-from Local to ExtraLocal

-from Processes to Forces

We have adopted 3 strategies to counter observation:

1)consider global forces and global domination

2)to see global forces as the contingent os Social process

3)the most radical: Inspiring Social Movements to seize control over their immediate and distant world, challenging the myth of runaway world.

There are 3 strategies of global ethnography. TransNational connections are the most directly Global experience!

Many experience globalization as a remote force that seems beyond Human Control!

6) Beyond the Nation.

Anthropology Is now returning to its forebears of the XIX century, Colonial administrators?

Classical sociology was born together with the police, universal schooling, welfare care, the popular newspaper, the trade Union, and the mass political party. Its message was Solidarity, legitimacy, and bureaucracy.

Indeed, rather than challenge sociology, world-system analysis is challenged by globalization by processes that are:

a) SupraNational: ex: CEOE. donde el gobierno cede atribuciones a organisms intrnacionales queue afectan a más naciones

b)TransNational: relaciones económicas (ideas,identidades) que transcienden fronteras

c) PostNational: El Estado nación, pierde identidad/supraNacional