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Ethnographies of closed doors: conceptualising openness and closure in US immigration and military institutions
Author(s) -
Belcher Oliver,
Martin Lauren L
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
area
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.958
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1475-4762
pISSN - 0004-0894
DOI - 10.1111/area.12048
Subject(s) - agency (philosophy) , argument (complex analysis) , sociology , state (computer science) , immigration , political science , openness to experience , public relations , public administration , law , political economy , social science , psychology , social psychology , biochemistry , chemistry , algorithm , computer science
In this article, we discuss our experience conducting ethnographic and archival research on illiberal processes within nominally liberal states – in this case, the USA . We focus on two different institutional practices based on our respective fieldwork: (1) counterinsurgency training of civilian and military personnel in Indiana for deployment in southern A fghanistan and (2) immigration enforcement, particularly immigrant family detention. Building on K och's (2013, this issue) argument for conceptualising closed contexts over il/liberal dichotomies, we analyse how liberal norms of open information, documentation and archiving function as governmental technologies. We argue that immigration and military agencies are not best understood as intentional, conspiratorial agencies bent on obscurity; rather, we show how a range of state and non‐state actors produce particular kinds of knowledge about US federal agency practices. By working through examples from our respective research projects, we show how seeking access to state agencies requires researchers' participation in the bounding of state and civil society. Rather than accept those boundaries, we argue that researchers in nominally liberal and illiberal states alike should pay close attention to how governmental technologies of openness and closure are woven together.