People, Place, and Time
How Structural Fieldwork Helps World-Systems Analysis
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12433440 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Paul K Gellert (0000-0002-1832-0120, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, corresponding author), Jon Shefner (University of Tennessee at Knoxville) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Pages | 193-218 |
| Publication date | 2009-08-26 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of World-Systems Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1076-156X • E-ISSN: 1076-156X |
| Publisher | University Library System, University of Pittsburgh (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.5195/jwsr.2009.318 |
| OpenAlex | W1582681393 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 22 |
| References cited | 73 |
Some of the most insightful work in the political economy of the world-system area has been produced by researchers whose extensive fieldwork offers them deep familiarity with people and locales. Few other methods are as useful to understand the impacts of structural change on daily life and the ways agents resist, alter, and shape emerging structures. Yet such structural fieldwork is marginalized by the over-reliance of pedagogical materials on social constructionist, social psychological, or interactionist perspectives and also in world-systems research and writing by the privileging of long durée historical or quantitative cross-national methods. This paper introduces the concept of structural fieldwork to describe a qualitative field methodology in which the researcher is self-consciously guided by considerations emerging out of macro-sociological theories. We identify four advantages of structural fieldwork: the illumination of power s multiple dimensions; examination of agency and its boundaries or limitations within broad political and economic structures; attention to nuances of change and durability, spatial and temporal specificities, and processes of change and durability; and challenging and extending social theory. These advantages are illustrated in select examples from existing literature and by discussion of the two author s fieldwork-based research. The paper concludes that explicit attention to fieldwork may strengthen political economy and world-systems research and also de-marginalize political economy informed by structural fieldwork
Agency (philosophy · Epistemology · Field (mathematics · Macro · Political science · Politics · Social change · Social constructionism · Social science · Social structure · Sociological theory · Sociology · Strict constructionism · Structure and agency · Computer Science · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies · Law · Religion and Society Interactions · World Systems and Global Transformations
Probing the interfaces between the social sciences and social-ecological resilience
India, Repression, and Ecologically Unequal Exchange of Wood
Private Governance, Hegemonic Struggles, and Institutional Outcomes in the Transnational Cotton Commodity Chain
Corruption and Palm Oil in a Cross-National Perspective
Restructuring legal geography
Global production network dis/articulations in Zanzibar
World Bank lending and deforestation
Non-governmental organizations, boomerangs, and forest loss
Unyielding humanity from catastrophic ruins
The Impact of Changing Demography and Socioeconomic Environments, and Ageing in a Small, Rural Town in Australia
Environmentally Related Taxes and Forest Loss
The International Monetary Fund, Structural Adjustment, and Infant Mortality
Global Sushi
Brewing Unequal Exchanges in Coffee
Neoliberalism, Grievances, and Democratization
Opposing Observations and the Political-Economy of Malaria Vulnerability
Doing business under the framework of disorder
From local site to global logics. Infrastructure, capitalism and violence
China, Mining, and Forests
Appetite for Destruction? China, Ecologically Unequal Exchange, and Forest Loss
Transnational intersectionality and domestic work
Tourism global production networks and uneven social upgrading in Kenya and Uganda
Unthinking social science
What Is a Case?
Global formation
Bourdieu's secret admirer in the Caucasus
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Net-Working for a Living
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The professional stranger
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Introduction
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The Active Interview
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Turkish Managers as a Part of the Transnational Capitalist Class
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The End of the World as We Know It
The Shifting Natures of “Development”
A World-Systems Reader
The End of the World as We Know it
From Managed to Free(r) Markets
Rethinking Civil Society in the Age of Nafta
Reorganising power in Indonesia
Global Ethnography
Works and lives
Territory, authority, rights
The Politics of Field Research
The Futures of Indigenous Peoples
Globalization, Class and Culture in Global Systems
Handbook of Ethnography
Incorporating Comparison within a World-Historical Perspective
The Illusion of Civil Society
Manufacturing Militance
Seeing Like a State
Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons
Anthropological Perspectives on Rural Mexico
In the Field
Sponsors and the Urban Poor
Ten Lies of Ethnography
Globalization
Austerity and Neighborhood Politics in Guadalajara, Mexico
The Extended Case Method
A Theory of Structure
Modes of Extraction, Unequal Exchange, and the Progressive Underdevelopment of an Extreme Periphery
Cross-National Evidence of the Effects of Foreign Investment and Aid on Economic Growth and Inequality
Conjuncture, Comparison, and Conditional Theory in Macrosocial Inquiry
Coalitions and clientelism in Mexico
Path dependence in historical sociology
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The political-economic causes of change in the ecological footprints of nations, 1991-2001
| Unique citing works | 22 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,47 |
| Citation span | 2011 - 2026 (16) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 21 |