Doing Global Fieldwork, by Jesse Driscoll (preface)

DOING GLOBAL FIELDWORK A Social Scientist’s Guide to Mixed-Methods Research Far from Home

JESSE DRISCOLL

PREFACE

I

spent much of my twenties living in some combination of Yemen, Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, and Tajikistan. Then I spent most of my thirties publishing with the data that I collected. Along the way I learned more about my craft and outgrew some youthful opinions. I feel gratitude to political science, my home discipline. I consider myself lucky to be a professional author with a job that gives me the opportunity to listen to graduate students’ half-baked research plans. In doing so, I can sometimes catch glimpses of a younger, brasher version of myself with startling clarity. Graduate students who come through my office often project brazen confidence that they have what it takes to do this job at a high level, even if they are not sure what is involved. I have assembled a book’s worth of advice I keep repeating to these students. Graduate students tend to be left to their own devices when it comes to figuring out how to collect high-integrity data from subjects or transform their observations into persuasive tests. When I was in graduate school I had more reading than time to do it, but what I recall that I needed, but did not have, was a how-to of directions to get to the field and start collecting stories. Hence this book.

Much of what is required to succeed in the discipline cannot be reliably taught: a strong work ethic, creativity, a knack for innovating on others’ work, the ability to work without supervision or direction, to take criticism, to delay gratification, and more. A book cannot teach any of

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that. Nor can a book instill confidence, which must be acquired solo.

What a book can do is provide advice on issues of psychological and physical preparation, professionalization, research practice, and selfpresentation. Some of the advice is sufficiently general to apply to master’s students, natural scientists, or scholars of the humanities, but I write with more confident authority on the needs of social scientists, especially political scientists. I do not imagine it possible for a poor field researcher to become a great one with this kind of advice, but maybe a mediocre field researcher can become a competent one.

If this book succeeds, it will be by infusing readers with an ethosbased improvisational pluralism. The meaning of this phrase will be explicated as the book unfolds. Once one gets serious about making the best of unexpected discoveries, “fake it till you make it” often requires starting over from scratch and leaving half-formed pieces of multiple vestigial dissertation prospectuses on the cutting-room floor. This is psychologically painful. I have concluded that there is no viable alternative.

It is not uncommon for students to get in over their heads, having embarked for the field with superficial understandings of the history, politics, or language associated with their chosen site. Few in their third year of graduate training have much knowledge of the literature, or how it is evolving, or how stiff the competition is. If you want to make fieldwork a part of your academic persona, however, the prescription is always the same: Weigh foreseeable consequences, plan as best you can, then jump. Supervised preparation and textbook knowledge can help, but these are never enough. You must also jump.

What does it mean to “jump”? How can one forge a sufficient plan?

How does one go about writing oneself into the political science canon?

Having seen many projects flounder or drag on for years—my own included—most of the chapters in this book are organized attempts to provide no-nonsense practical things to consider if one wants to collect high-integrity data. It ought not to be read as a methods manifesto. I do not feel confident enough to be evangelical about high theory debates.

My advice is organized into seven signposted chapters assuming a busy reader who will skip around. I assume this book will be reread in fits and starts rather than absorbed in one sitting. Chapter 1 sorts three kinds of pre-fieldwork writing by audience (mentors, bureaucrats, donors).

Chapter 2 provides a preplanning checklist to get out the door. Chapter 3

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is filled with tips for planning self-presentation. Chapter 4 discusses basic interview, archival, and participant observation strategies. Chapter 5 sketches strategies for data collection as a manager of a small local team. Chapter 6 addresses specific planning concerns for designs in zones of contested sovereignty and authoritarian governance, trying to demystify and devalorize extreme fieldwork. Chapter 7 concludes with a discussion of coming home, putting the past where it belongs, and writing up findings. Between the chapters are small “FAQ” inserts, written informally, directly answering the six most common questions that I receive regarding fieldwork.

Since I am sometimes writing to a younger version of myself, the prose jumps a bit haphazardly between first, third, and second person. I sometimes slip between past and present tense. I am grateful to Columbia University Press for indulging me. The book draws heavily on my own lived experience and develops an extended analogy about fieldworkers as apprentices and journeymen in a guild, so some material in this book may be alienating to a non-American reader planning fieldwork in her own society and then a career in her home country. My intent is to write about what I know, not to offend. I do not wish to give the impression that I believe the “real” academy exists only in Europe and North America. That is not my belief.

There are many ways to make sausage. This book shares my favorite recipe notes from a moment in my life. It is not the only recipe, nor the only good one. But it will be helpful.

“Jesse Driscoll has given researchers a comprehensive guide to getting into the field. He brings to bear his vast knowledge of the topic, based on his own years of experience, and does so with unexpected humor. This book provides unparalleled insight into the nuts and bolts of fieldwork, which are often left unspoken, that you will not find anywhere else.”

— JENNIFER

BRICK MURTAZASHVILI , author of

Informal Order and the State in Afghanistan “Driscoll’s advice is honest, down-to-earth, and practical about reconciling the ideals of scientific inquiry with the messy realities of fieldwork. Reading it feels like having a conversation about your research with a wise friend.”

— RICHARD

A. NIELSEN , author of Deadly Clerics: Blocked Ambition and the Paths to Jihad

“With Driscoll’s meticulously researched, engagingly delivered, and detailed guidance as well as encouragement, the reader will not only be ready to go on a journey into the unknown but they will also be ready to return from it with stories, data, and insights that will regale as well as inform.

Buy the book, absorb it, and then jump. You’ll thank him later.”

— CHRISTIAN

DAVENPORT, coauthor of The Peace Continuum: What It Is and How to Study It

“Driscoll invites the reader to think seriously about what it really means to do field research in political science—methodologically, intellectually, and emotionally. He writes honestly about what’s hard about fieldwork and why it’s worth doing anyway.”

— ORA

SZEKELY, coeditor of Stories from the Field: A Guide to Navigating Fieldwork in Political Science

“Every researcher headed for the field should read this book, especially those headed to one of the many unstable but not-quite-war-zone sorts of places.

Doing Global Fieldwork brings to the reader in plain and direct terms the reality that field research rarely goes according to plan.”

— WILLIAM

RENO , author of Warfare in Independent Africa

JESSE DRISCOLL

is associate professor of political science at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California at San Diego. He is the author of Warlords and Coalition Politics in Post-Soviet States (2015), and he has conducted research in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Somalia, Georgia, and Ukraine.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS / NEW YORK c u p . co l u m b i a . e d u Cover design: Noah Arlow