New Frontiers: Populism, Progress and Political Ethnography Event

Event details

This lecture is concerned with charting new research frontiers and positioning political ethnography within them. The core argument is that in terms of both the changing research funding landscape within the United Kingdom and the shifting socio-political landscape within and beyond the United Kingdom – both very much ‘new frontiers’ in their own right – the need for an international centre of excellence in relation to political ethnography has never been greater. Needed, that is, in both scholarly terms and in relation to helping understand and address major social challenges. In this lecture, Matt Flinders attempts to map the topography of this new research terrain and the place of political ethnography within it. In doing so he seeks to draw upon the work of C Wright Mills to set out the ‘ethnographic imagination’ and, through this, use the notions of ‘the promise’ and ‘the trap’ to chart a fresh and vibrant research agenda that is likely to dovetail with future research funding priorities. Taken together, the ‘new frontiers’ are likely to favour those areas of intellectual inquiry that are capable of trespassing across traditional disciplinary and professional boundaries and of seeing opportunities where others see only problems. Flourishing in the new research environment is therefore likely to demand a mixture of audacity, agility and ambition; or, put simply, an (ethnographic) imagination.