Qualitative Methods in Political Science Research. The Eleventh: An Ethnographic Listening Exercise I. Description & Hypotheses

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The Eleventh: An Ethnographic Listening Exercise
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The Eleventh: An Ethnographic Listening Exercise I. Description & Hypotheses
Politically, Australia is an “nuder radar” polity. That is, unless a major political event occurs, eventualities at local and national level are hardly recognizable beyond Southeast Asia. This is, conceptually, an interesting point given how politics is, by definition, an identity-shaping practice informing political systems for generations, if not centuries. Indeed, political science is a discipline concerned about studying political systems, governance and practice of power. In Australia, politics, from an outsider’s perspective, is confined to established framings of political development and power exchanges between identifiable, party-aligned agents – just as in most, if not all, polities. The growing uncertainties in political analysis – brought about by increasing overlap between active agents and emergence of new ones at local, national and international levels – have ushered in new perspective and, more importantly, frames of reference and analysis to perform political analysis in radical new ways.
To put matters into perspective, one major Australian political event, i.e. The Dismissal on November 11th 1975, is discussed. More specifically, Australia's former PM Gough Whitlam’s dismissal from office by former Governor-General Sir John Kerr following a series of political developments is discussed. The central concern in current essay is less about event specifics, particularly as reported officially in news media and established political science literature. Instead, ethnography, as an emerging political analysis method, is used in order to highlight, and hopefully uncover, gaps conventional political science analysis methods leave out in favor of a more “systematic” approach to political systems, developments and events. Three episodes from The Eleventh podcast are listened to, as part of current exercise, in order to
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explore potentials of ethnographic investigation as, perhaps, an alternative analysis method to current established political analysis methods centered on macro as opposed to micro political systems, modes of interaction and phenomena.
The change in perspective, from a macro to a micro one, by employing ethnographic mode of analysis as opposed to conventional political analysis methods is, essentially, seminal to current ethnographic listening exercise. By engaging in participant observation, albeit in a retro manner and mediated by a podcast, I suggest ethnographic analysis is a viable analysis method to understand underlying factors, not only political ones, at play giving rise to one or more political events, The Dismissal in current case. Theoretically, I put forward a hypothesis, below, I believe holds valid in Australian political context:
Hypothesis: Retro narratives of past political events reported by contemporary journalists add more perspective to and inform earlier political framings of a given political event.
II. Methodology
I use a fairly straightforward approach in current ethnographic exercise. Essentially, I listen to four podcast episodes (Tugwell, 2020a; Tugwell, 2020b; Tugwell, 2020c; Tugwell, 2020d) of The Eleventh, an investigative reporting series unearthing new evidence about one of Australia's most significant political events: The Dismissal on November 11th 1975. Informed by a political science background and emerging research on growing importance of ethnography as an analysis method in political science (Brodkin, 2017; Shah, 2017; Boswell et al., 2019), I started listening to assigned number of podcasts.
The podcasts offer an innovative perspective to political analysis. Hosted by Alex Mann, The Eleventh episodes combine a range of reporting political analysis methods including,
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but not limited to, introductory and closing voice overs; interviews; sound effects; and voice duets played out by host and different guests. In so doing, The Eleventh is aligned to a growing body of literature about so-called “elite ethnography” whereby human and humanizing stories are told about elites and, as such, offering a “powerful alternative” contributing to more informed public debate (Boswell et al.).
From a methodological perspective, I have been able to collect data in radically new ways. In lieu of conventional literature review and/or direct field participant observation, I have been engaged in an ethnographic listening exercise not only reported in retro by a journalist who was not born when discussed events unfolded but, more importantly, have been able to gain insights from elite political agents now reflecting back on events decades ago. The retro aspect in The Eleventh is particularly insightful in current ethnographic listening exercise. Specifically, active political agents, usually analyzed in formal political systems and according to prescribed political roles and hierarchies, are now humanized and offered a floor to speak up about events in less formal ways and, as such, unearthing layers of meaning and interactions rarely, if at all, reported by conventional political analysis metho...