Why is there no ethnography of citizenship?

Debate
By Nicolas Mariot
English

The article starts with the following observation: in western democracies, ethnography of the place of politics in everyday life is unusual. Why is it the case? The given answer returns in the existence of the ideal picture of the “good citizen” in social science literature: an individual who regularly forges in himself his own opinions and values from what he hears and sees. This norm explains at the same time that political scientists consider to be natural to question the people about the supply of ideas which they are supposed to have in mind, and the absence of direct observation: how to see thoughts without questioning the one who has them? In finale, the article tries hard to go up in what an ethnographic approach would allow to break with this perspective, that is to say to return their real places in indifference for politics as in social embedding of political participation.

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