Notes on Methods Political Ethnography as a Method for Understanding Urban Politics and Elections in India Manisha Priyam 1 Introduction This commentary on the use of the ethnographic method in understanding urban politics and elections in India is on the one hand an attempt to advance methodological pluralism in comprehending electoral politics and change, and on the other, makes use of more specific insights drawn from the use of the method in understanding politics in an urban periphery. 2 The promise of the first (methodological plural- ism) is a more general one—that of using ethnography to expand the methods basket employed to perceive and comprehend the special political event of elections. These should not remain confined to diagnostics from ‘Large N’ samples and use of quantitative techniques alone. While these quantitative techniques explain or at least stylize categorical data using rigorous selection procedures and data analy- sis techniques, and posit explanations for large outcomes (such as election results), they are unable to tell us much on the interpretive aspects of voter behaviour, including the meanings that citizens attach to the political action of voting. In what appears to be a neat and categorical division of labour, the quantitative methods are seen here as best suited for the ‘Large N’, and the ethnographic as a part of the qualitative methods suited for the ‘small n’. For the former, apart from the its suitability for a large scale, there is also the claim of impersonal generalizability of research outcomes, while the latter remain thick narra- tives of the personal. 3 In this binary division (of labour and epistemic terrains), the ethnographic method is considered at best a supplement to the more rigorous studies done on a generalizable scale. It is in the second—the more specific insights generated from the use of the ethnographic method in understanding electoral politics in an unauthorized urban slum settlement of the labouring poor—that the sui generis potential of this method (i.e., the ethnographic method) is realized. Used alongside other methods, synchronized in their study of ‘electoral time’, and observing people and institutions up close and on the ground, according significance to experience and meanings, it not just adds to what we know about elections and politics from a subjective perspective. At the very least, it is in argument with these other methods, even challenging some of their established tenets. On the outside, firmly grounded in 1 National University for Educational Planning and Administration 2 This section is coordinated by Divya Vaid, divya.vaid09@gmail.com 3 That the difference in scale is not the real difference between the quantitative method and ethnographies is also highlighted by the fact that a survey using techniques of randomness is possible for a small sample—for which ethnography can also be done. The difference in the two methods still remains in terms of differences in research practice and theoretical interpretation thereafter. Studies in Indian Politics 4(1) 1–9 © 2016 Lokniti, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies SAGE Publications sagepub.in/home.nav DOI: 10.1177/2321023016634962 http://inp.sagepub.com Corresponding author: Manisha Priyam, National University for Educational Planning and Administration, 17-B Aurobindo Marg, New Delhi 110016, India. E-mail: priyam.manisha@gmail.com