Deep Ethnography, Transnational Social Movements and Vulnerable Populations

methodologies, especially in-depth observation) has recently come under strong scrutiny given the ethical, methodological and substantive challenges in its recent implementation. Studying survival behavior of extremely vulnerable populations using ethnographic methods presents different issues to the examination of activist strategies of transnational social movements. In this talk, I share my experience studying transnational environmental non-governmental organizations’ mobilization strategies and compare it with my recent analyses of informal waste pickers’ strategic choices across a broad range of Latin American and European countries. In the talk, I address both the substantive issues of undertaking comparative public policy studies across different target populations, and the peculiarities of fieldwork in two very different environments. I draw some preliminary conclusions on what we can learn about ethnographic methodology and how we can address the ethical issues within deep ethnography.

Transcript

1. Deep Ethnography, Transnational
   Social Movements and Vulnerable
   Populations
   DR. RAUL PACHECO-VEGA
   CENTRO DE INVESTIGACIÓN Y DOCENCIA ECONÓMICAS (CIDE)
   LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES SEMINAR SERIES
   UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT, STORRS.
   OCTOBER 19TH, 2015
   

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2. Ethnography as method
    Ethnographic inquiry
    Study of social and political phenomena using
   qualitative methodologies, especially in-depth
   participant observation
    Has recently come under strong scrutiny.
   There are ethical, methodological and
   substantive challenges in its recent
   implementation
    In this talk I share my experiences using
   ethnography as a research method comparing
   two very distinct target populations.
   

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3. Ethnographic research in political science
   o Studying survival behavior of extremely vulnerable (waste picking)
   populations using ethnographic methods offers different challenges
   than the examination of activist strategies of transnational social
   movements.
   o Up until recently, ethnography had been pretty much shunned by
   quantitativist/positivist political science (Wedeen 2010), though some
   key scholars in public administration/PoliSci have recently praised its
   value (Rhodes 2015) and emphasized why it’s valuable
   

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4. Two projects
   The global politics of informal waste picking (2012-
   2016)
    Understanding the relational dynamics of municipal
   governments with their waste picker populations.
   2012-2015 Fieldwork in 13 cities in 8 countries
   Paris (France), Madrid (Spain), Aguascalientes, Leon
   (Mexico), Milan, Venice (Italy), Vancouver, Calgary
   (Canada), Tokyo, Mishima (Japan), Montevideo (Uruguay),
   Washington DC, Los Angeles (USA)
    Spectrum of relationships (cooperative-
   confrontational)
   Activist strategies in the North American context
   (2000-2015)
    Understanding transnational NGO coalition building
   strategies and mechanisms of influence in domestic
   environmental policy-making.
    1999-2001 Participated in every single meeting of the
   PRTR/RETC project as an observer.
   Interviewed/observed over 30 ENGOs at 8 different
   sites.
    2001-2015 Followed up on activist strategies and
   domestic implementation of PRTR
   

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5. Transnational environmental NGOS in
   North America
   Been closely studying the Commission for Environmental Cooperation since 1999 (NA-PRTR Project).
   Mexico changed from voluntary PRTR reporting to mandatory
   Strong pressure from ENGOs
    Transnational coalition-building strategies
    Second-order pressure transmission mechanisms (Pacheco-Vega 2001, 2002, 2005a, 2005b)
    Forced convergence – goal of NA-PRTR project
   PRTR in Mexico (Registro de Emisiones y Transferencia de Contaminantes, RETC) – slowly moving
   towards compliance
   Implementation has been steadily lagging behind Canada and US
    Some evidence of policy learning (Harrison, Pacheco-Vega and Winfield 2003)
    Accountability through PRTRs? Some mixed evidence (Pacheco-Vega 2007a, b)
    ENGO mobilization using knowledge (epistemic communities literature) Pacheco-Vega 2015
   

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6. Evaluating the Citizen Submission on
   Enforcement Matters Mechanism (CSEM) of
   the CEC
   Puzzled by the CSEM process (with Jonathan Fox, UCSC and Inger Weibust, Carleton University),
   funded by the Programa de Investigación y Estudios sobre la Región de América del Norte
   (PIERAN, El Colegio de México), Research Programmme on the North American Region
   Independent assessment of citizen claims.
    Who uses the mechanism?
    Why do they use it?
   Does this mechanism help bring ENGOs together and form coalitions?
   What type of policy responses come from each Party?
   

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7. Some insights
   (now SEM only – strange to remove “citizen”)
    Mexico has faced the most number of submissions
    Steady decline in recent years in the US
   SEM as an accountability measure
    Faute de mieux (for lack of something better) (Weibust 2006, Pacheco-Vega, Weibust and Fox 2010)
    How effective has it been? Can we compare its success to other information-based measures (e.g. PRTRs?) (Pacheco-Vega
   2006, Pacheco-Vega 2013c)
   Taking stock: What is new with SEM?
    More recently, and more puzzling, steady decline against Canada (Pacheco-Vega 2013a, 2013b, forthcoming)
   

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8. Distribution of citizen submissions on enforcement matters (1995-2012) (N=81. Source:
   Pacheco-Vega 2015)
   Canada, 31,
   38%
   U.S, 10, 12%
   Mexico, 40,
   50%
   CSEM distribution per country (1996-2012)
   Total number of citizen submissions on
   enforcement matters (1996-2012) per country
   targeted (N=81. Source: Pacheco-Vega 2015)
   

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9. Transnational environmental NGOS in
   North America
   

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10. Project (s)
    • “The Comparative Politics of Garbage Governance”
    • Comparing informal waste picking practices across countries (book Project)
    • So far:, a few of the cities Montevideo (Uruguay), Tokyo (Japan), Vancouver (Canada), Washington DC (USA), Paris
    (France), Madrid (Spain), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Leon and Aguascalientes (Mexico), possibly Bogota (Colombia) and
    Sao Paulo (Brazil)
    • Collective project (edited volume) including Egypt, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Vietnam, Spain,
    Uruguay (possibly add Colombia)
    • “Exploring Exploring Models of Electronic Wastes Governance in the United States and Mexico:
    Recycling, Risk, and Environmental Justice”
    • With Kate O’Neill (University of California Berkeley) – Funding UC MEXUS CONACYT
    • Identifying the multi-level and multi-sectoral features of electronic waste governance in the US and Mexico, and
    • Identifying major obstacles to, and the forces that shape effective governance interventions.
    

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11. Informal waste pickers’ strategic choices
    • Perception of waste as a resource
    • in environmental engineering literature and
    • life cycle analysis
    • However,
    • it has been the informal sector that has reminded us in the social sciences
    realm that waste can actually be a resource (E. Sekerka & Stimel, 2014).
    

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12. Informal waste pickers’ strategic choices
    • Waste pickers characterized as:
    • have gained increased political power, thus being able to ascertain a high level of agency
    (Ahmed & Ali, 2006; Rouse, 2006),
    ◦or
    • as almost always self-interested individuals whose only focus is individual survival
    through low-skill, high-environmental-risk, low payoff labor (Ezeah, Fazakerley, &
    Roberts, 2013).
    • Neither is entirely accurate nor is the literature conclusive on whether
    informal waste recycling improves or deteriorates scavengers’ livelihoods.
    

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13. Why cross-national approaches?
    • Cross-national comparison approach to explore:
    • whether the political climate in each country may have had an
    impact in how informal waste pickers self-organize,
    • whether politics has played a role in shifting technologies and
    locational practices and if there has been any visible impact
    (positive or negative) on their welfare
    03/07/2015 ICPP 2015 13
    

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14. 03/07/2015 ICPP 2015 14
    Leon Montevideo Madrid Vancouver
    Organizational
    dynamics Disorganized Well-organized Disorganized Organized
    Picking practices
    (location/site)
    Household Container Container Dumpster or
    container
    Technology choices Bike with frontal cube Trash/bin bag Trash/bin bag Trash/bin bag
    Relationships with
    local government
    Confrontational Cooperative Confrontational Collaborative
    Type of waste Mostly cardboard,
    plastic bottles
    Cans, cardboard,
    miscellaneous
    Cardboard Cans, cardboard
    Definition of informal
    waste picker
    Pepenador Cartonero Cartonero Dumpster diver
    Source: Pacheco-Vega (2015) International Conference on Public Policy, Milan, Italy
    

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15. Informal waste pickers’ strategic choices
    

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16. Project Informal waste pickers Transnational ENGO coalitions
    Rationale • Bringing informal waste pickers into the
    discussion broadens the conversation
    because it shifts our view
    • from focusing on technological choice
    (how to properly dispose of waste) to
    • examining policy/societal choice (how to
    involve all members of society in how
    waste streams are managed).
    • Understanding ENGO strategies through two main
    pathways:
    • Transnational advocacy networks as
    influencers (Keck and Sikkink’s boomerang,
    Pacheco/Vega’s first/second order
    mechanisms)
    • Transnational ENGO coalition building as a
    pressure strategy (naming and shaming)
    (Murdie & Urpelainen 2015)
    Interviewees
    and participants
    • Marginalized, disadvantaged
    • Undertaking survival economy
    • Challenging government officials? Difficult
    • Elites (major ENGO heads participate in NACEC
    meetings)
    • Facing government officials? Piece of cake 
    Ethnographic
    strategy
    • Embeddedness • Embeddedness
    Ethical concerns • Further marginalization, stigmatization
    • Reification of a weaker position
    • Weakening of elite position
    • Regulatory capture (?)
    

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17. The peculiarities of fieldwork in two very
    different environments
     Positionality
     To what extent is the researcher really removed?
     Vulnerability and subject protection
     Are we reifying and sustaining stigmatization?
     Ethics of data management
     (recording, storing, reproducibility issues)
    

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18. In conclusion: Beyond ethnography
    o Ethnography as ONE research method of a broad suite
     But… see critiques of mixed-methods in graduate studies
    o Is it the method or the person?
     Ethnographic performance is, largely, the work of the ethnographer
    o Which issues remain unaddressed?
     Implicit biases and explicit biases, positionality, power dynamics
    

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19. Acknowledgements and thanks
    Thank you to
     The UNESCO Chair and Institute of Comparative Human Rights
     El Instituto: Institute of Latina/o, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies
     Department of History
     Department of Political Science
     Special thanks: Dr. Mark Healey (History)
    

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20. Thank you! Any questions, comments?
    My contact details:
    raul.pacheco-vega@cide.edu
    Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/RaulPacheco
    Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/DrPachecoVega
    Website: http://www.raulpacheco.org
    Publications: http://cide.academia.edu/RaulPachecoVega
    

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