Qual Sociol (2006) 29:257–259 DOI 10.1007/s11133-006-9028-7 SPECIAL ISSUE: POLITICAL ETHNOGRAPHY I Introductory Note to Politics under the Microscope: Special Issue on Political Ethnography I Javier Auyero Published online: 9 June 2006 C  Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006 2006 “Go and sit in the lounges of the luxury hotels and on the doorsteps of the flophouses; sit on the Gold Coast settees and on the slum shakedown; sit in the Orchestra Hall and the Star and Garter Burlesque. In short, gentlemen, go get the seat of your pants dirty in real research.” Robert Park The revival of ethnographic research within sociology is undisputed. New journals, new books from major presses, new research initiatives from funding agencies, and new hires at top research departments all attest to the renewal, growth, and increasing relevance of the ethnographic craft among sociologists. As ethnography is (re)gaining a well-deserved prominence within the discipline its empirical focus, theoretical underpinnings, and narrative styles are also expanding – traditional forms of ethnographic inquiry now co-exist with more experimental ones. From dealing drugs (Bourgois, 1995), to emigrating and immigrating (Fitzgerald, 2006), prostituting (Murphy and Venkatesh, 2006), boxing (Wacquant, 2003a), dancing (Wain- wright, Williams, & Turner, 2005), glassblowing (O’Connor, 2006), designing objects (Molotch, 2005), opera-going (Benzecry, forthcoming), and street vending (Duneier, 2000) –the list of activities and subjects upon which ethnography has focused its attention in recent years is virtually inexhaustible. Ethnographers have been heeding Park’s advice: they have gotten the seat of their pants dirty in a myriad of places, researching all sorts of (more or less exotic) practices. Yet, at a time when few, if any, objects are beyond the reach and scrutiny of ethnographers, it is quite surprising that politics and its main protagonists (state officials, politicians, and activists) remain largely un(der)studied by ethnography’s mainstream. It is indeed fair to say that both routine (party, union, NGO) and contentious (social movement and other forms of collective action) politics are far from the top of contemporary ethnography’s agenda. One figure should suffice to illustrate politics’ marginal status among sociological ethnography: out of 215 articles published in the last ten years in ethnography’s main journal, the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, only fifteen focus on politics as their main subject (see Hunter, 1993 and Ostrander, 1993 for some of the few prior exceptions). It is time to move politics out of the shadows and into the center of ethnographic attention. This special issue seeks to accomplish that. Springer