This talk discusses a broad category of qualitative field methods for research in politics and other social science fields. One way of thinking about research techniques involving human subjects (people) is as a spectrum. On one end lies the interview （访谈）, typically lasting an hour or two and driven by questions that the researcher poses. At the other end lies ethnography （民族志）, in which the researcher immerses himself or herself within a field site for weeks or months and learns from observation as well as questioning. Sometimes one or the other of these is appropriate, but in other circumstances researchers may wish to employ techniques falling somewhere between these two extremes and incorporating elements of both, such as serial interviews or what I have called site intensive research.
Prof. Read will discuss such techniques and considerations about when to employ them. He will put this in the context of ideas from his 2015 co-authored book, _Field Research in Political Science_, and recent developments in qualitative methods more generally. He will draw on examples from his research on local politics in China.
Time:
5 December 2019 (Thursday) 15:30-17:00
Venue:
Room 1605, Department of Sociology, Administration Building, Zijingang Campus
Speaker's Info:
Benjamin Read, Born in Madison, Wisconsin, Benjamin Read spent a year of his childhood in the Dutch village of Overasselt and another in socialist Beijing, undergoing indoctrination at public schools in all three localities. He later studied at Cornell, UC Berkeley, and Harvard. Fluent in Mandarin, Ben has lived, worked, and conducted fieldwork in mainland China for a total of more than five years and in Taiwan for more than one year. He taught at the University of Iowa before joining the Politics faculty at UC Santa Cruz in 2008. He enjoys road biking, mountain biking, and hiking, and is an instrument-rated private pilot.
