Protagonist-Driven Urban Ethnography

Jessica Shannon Cobb*

University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law
Kimberly Kay Hoang
University of Chicago

THE OBJECT OF ETHNOGRAPHY

Sociologists credit the University of Chicago as the birthplace of urban ethnography

and view Robert E. Park and Ernest Burgess as the field’s foundational scholars. Park
and Burgess urged their students to leave the musty stacks of the library to conduct
first-hand observations; the ideal ethnographer was a “disinterested researcher who as-
sembled subjective findings without distortion” (Park and Burgess 1925 [1967]). Since
its founding, urban ethnography has been an immersive exploration of the local yet un-
familiar. The field has evolved to systematically document the connections between indi-
viduals and organizations (Vargas Forthcoming), institutions (Lara-Millán 2014), and the
broader social, political, and economic context of the urban environment (Carlson 2015;
Hoang 2015).
In the 1980s and 1990s, a Bourdieusian tradition of reflexivity developed alongside
“standpoint theory,” a distinctly feminist epistemology. Ethnographers in both schools of
thought questioned the consequences of sensationalizing “other” places and people in
their research. These epistemological frameworks questioned the taken-for-granted rela-
tionship between the researcher and research participants where only the researcher was
a legitimate “agent of knowledge” (Harding 1988:3). Conceptually, they opened ground
for new ways of knowing based on a deep understanding of actors’ “symbolic templates
for [their] practical activities” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:7) and on the structural
location of “situated knowledge” (Haraway 1988).
These concepts became slippery when applied to urban ethnography. Broadly, schol-
ars recognized a relationship between personal standpoint and academic research: The
researcher’s position affects site selection, data analysis, presentation, and interpretation
of findings. They responded to this relationship with calls for embodied commitments to
the research project and for clarity and transparency regarding the researcher’s position
in the field.
Yet in practice, the turn toward embodied, transparent ethnography seemed to defeat
the purposes of analyzing subaltern knowledge and of tapping into the deep understand-
ings of scholars who occupy a similar marginal position to their research subjects. Instead,
contemporary urban ethnography too often fuses objectivity and subjectivity into a kind
of scholar-centered ethnography. In this popular form, scholars establish their legitimacy by

∗ Correspondence should be addressed to Jessica Shannon Cobb, UCLA School of Law, 385 Charles E Young
Dr. E, Los Angeles, CA 90095; cobb2018@ucla.lawnet.edu.

City & Community 14:4 December 2015

doi: 10.1111/cico.12136

C 2015 American Sociological Association, 1430 K Street NW, Washington, DC 20005

348
 PROTAGONIST-DRIVEN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY

focusing on their difference from their communities of study. The researcher’s journey
into the field dominates the narrative and eclipses the lived experiences of the research
subjects.
We argue that a turn toward reflexive ethnography inadvertently shifted the ethno-
graphic objective away from theorizing social phenomena and toward describing the re-
searcher’s relationship to the field. Consequently, critiques of scholarship tend to take
the form of ad hominem attacks on the scholar and ethnographers are trapped between
two stereotypical subject positions—the stranger in a strange land and the native son.
We call for protagonist-driven urban ethnography, encouraging scholars to place the lived
experiences of research participants at the center of their research and writing.

SCHOLAR-CENTERED ETHNOGRAPHY

The move toward acknowledging subjectivity in research relationships remains in ten-

sion with the desire to assert that ethnography provides an accurate representation of
the object of study, producing a “self-reflexive paralysis and a retreat into autoethnog-
raphy”(Duneier et al. 2014). Many researchers attempting a self-reflexive approach
ultimately describe their personal journey of discovery instead of describing and theo-
rizing an extant set of relationships and ideas. Often, these narratives “discover” a social
world that is impenetrable, exoticized, and other, reproducing the very problem that self-
reflexivity was intended to resolve.
It no longer makes sense to imagine impenetrable worlds in contemporary urban
ethnography. The separation between the “library stacks” and the “real world” is always
shrinking as urban population density grows, as middle-to-upper class and white popula-
tions shrink, and as new media bring people of various backgrounds together in urban
space. Moreover, the halls of academia are no longer occupied only by persons unfamil-
iar with diverse urban experiences and communities. Many contemporary scholars come
from or collaborate with the very communities they study.
Academia has been slow to catch up to these developments. A self-reflexive paralysis has
seized not only individual researchers but also an entire field of research. Urban ethnog-
raphy is often celebrated when the author can articulate their positionality in terms of
difference and ignored when the scholar is subjectively similar to the community under
study. For example, the excellent urban ethnographies Renegade Dreams (Ralph 2014) and
Stickup Kids (Contreras 2013) did not receive the same celebrity as Alice Goffman’s On the
Run (2014). Early praise for the book often referenced Goffman’s whiteness, her family’s
academic pedigree, and her femininity in relation to the poor Black men she studied—
and much of the recent backlash against the book attacked her personal characteristics
and moral character.
Researcher-centered ethnography is embroiled in a bizarre politics of subjectivity that
forecloses all but two subject positions: The stranger in a strange land reads as either a
heroic conqueror or as a credulous naı̈f in his/her reporting of the field; the native son is
taken as a spokesperson rather than a scholar even as his/her allegiances to the commu-
nity are called into question. A scholar-centered approach to ethnography perverts the
intersectional feminist insights that (1) the margins are in a privileged position to see the
center and that (2) identities and experiences are produced dialogically (Collins 1999).
To reclaim the power of subjectively grounded research to reveal relations of domination,

349
 CITY & COMMUNITY

resistance, cooperation, and conflict throughout complex urban environments, a transi-

tion is needed to center ethnography on the research participants, not the researcher.

PROTAGONIST-DRIVEN ETHNOGRAPHY
We see an exciting new possibility for ethnographic methods in what we call protagonist-
driven research. This research agenda acknowledges that reflexivity is a method, not an
objective. Considering one’s subjectivity as entering into dialogue with others in the field
is a means to achieve good data and to conceptualize that data, not an end in and of
itself.
In protagonist-driven research, the scholar sacrifices ego to achieve ethnographic im-
mersion. Moments of discomfort in the field—confusion, fear, resentment, etc.—are
interpreted not as juicy anecdotes to highlight for the reader but as signals that the re-
searcher must go deeper into the social world under study. The immersion process is also
conducted in community with a trusted network of scholars to reflect on realizations and
misunderstandings throughout the entire research process. Because we are all the pro-
tagonists of our own imagining, community support is needed to push scholars out of the
center and to bring the margins of the urban social world into view.
Protagonist-driven research begins with the development of relationships the scholar
hopes will help answer open-ended questions. Gradually, the scholar develops networks
of contacts and a web of local knowledge to develop a systematic sampling frame. Within
this frame, the scholar seeks to achieve both breadth and depth—forming an array of
relationships and asking more questions as their base of situated knowledge deepens.
The scholar’s goal is neither to become like the research subjects nor to maintain distance
from them; the goal is to understand those subjects to develop connections that become
themes that become concepts that become theories. In this way, urban ethnographers
can develop generalizable contributions while maintaining a locally grounded stance.
Finally, protagonist-driven writing makes the research subjects the focal point of the
final narrative. The researcher is responsible for developing the analytical frame, but
these lead characters are responsible for animating that frame. In this way, protagonist-
driven ethnographies take seriously Dorothy Smith’s (1987) and Rosalinda Gonzalez’s
(1987) argument that the social location of marginalized groups fosters awareness of and
skepticism toward the structures that produce their marginalization. Though the scholar
has an important role to play in describing the broader social context and theorizing
the dynamics they witness on the ground, these situated insights are best provided by the
people who actually live them. In place of scholars who claim difference, scholars who
can form strong connections to their research participants to fully articulate their stories
will hold the upper hand in a field that celebrates protagonist-centered research.
By adopting a protagonist-centered approach, we hope to see personal acclaim and
attacks fall away from the field of urban ethnography. Instead, we would like to see praise
and critique—among academics but also among the politicians, media, and urban resi-
dents with whom we now frequently interact—focus on substance: the empirical puzzle,
the theoretical contribution, and the methodological rigor of a project. This turn is the
next step needed to bring the ethnographic objective out of the musty stacks and into
the vibrancy of the urban environment.

350
 PROTAGONIST-DRIVEN URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY

REFERENCES
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loic J.D. Wacquant. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
Carlson, Jennifer. 2015. Citizen-Protectors: The Everyday Politics of Guns in an Age of American Decline. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Collins, Patricia Hill. 1999. “Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist
Thought.” Social Problems 33(6):S14–S32.
Contreras, Randol. 2013. The Stickup Kids: Race, Drugs, Violence, and the American Dream. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Duneier, Mitchell, Philip Kasinitz, and Alexandra Murphy. 2014. “An Invitation to Urban Ethnography.” In
Mitchell Duneier, Philip Kasinitz, and Alexandra Murphy (eds.), The Urban Ethnography Reader, pp. 1–8. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Goffman, Alice. 2014. On the Run: Fugative Life in an American City. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Gonzalez, Rosalinda. 1987. “Distinctions in Western Women’s Experience: Ethnicity, Class, and Social Change.”
In Susan Armitage and Elizabeth Jameson (eds.), The Women’s West, pp. 237–252. Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press.
Haraway, Donna. 1988. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial
Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14(3):575–599.
Harding, Sandra. 1988. “Introduction.” In Sandra Harding (ed.), Feminism and Methodology, pp. 1–14. Bloom-
ington: University of Indiana Press.
Hoang, Kimberly Kay. 2015. Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global
Sex Work. Oakland: University of California Press.
Lara-Millán, Armando. 2014. “Public Emergency Room Overcrowding in the Era of Mass Imprisonment.” Amer-
ican Sociological Review 79(5):866–887.
Park, Robert E., and Ernest Burgess. 1925 [1967]. The City: Suggestions for Investigation of Human Behavior and
Urban Environment. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Ralph, Laurence. 2014. Renegade Dreams: Living through Injury in Gangland Chicago. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
Smith, Dorothy E. 1987. “Women’s Perspective as a Radical Critique of Sociology.” In Sandra Harding (ed.),
Feminism and Methodology, pp. 84–96. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Vargas, Robert. Forthcoming. Wounded City: Violent Turf Wars in a Chicago Barrio. New York: Oxford University
Press.

351