ABSTRACT
Political anthropology is a minority sport and until recently there was little work by political scientists (Aronoff and Kubik 2013: 19; Schatz 2009: 1). Joseph et al. (2007: 2) examined 1,000 articles published in the American Journal of Political Science and the American Political Science Review between 1996 and 2005. They found that ‘only one article relies on ethnography as a data-production technique’. There are no chapters on political science in the comprehensive surveys of ethnography by, for example, Atkinson et al. (2007) and Bryman (2001). So, there are no schools of thought about the theory or methods of political ethnography. Joseph et al. (2007: 2) conclude there is a ‘double absence: of politics in ethnographic literature and of ethnography in the study of politics’ (emphasis in the original).
