ABSTRACT
Ethnography, as a methodology, has deep roots in anthropology and only recently has been seen by political scientists and international relations (IR) scholars as an important methodology. As a research method, ethnography advocates long-term immersion in the field, situating the researcher among the community she is researching, either as an active participant or an observer or a combination of the two. Such a method offers researchers an important opportunity to produce empirically rich research on militarised communities. Ethnographic research has proven vital in connecting the global with the local in the production of security. However, ethnography remains a challenging method in so much as it requires researchers to immerse themselves in the security community. Such immersion brings about issues regarding gaining and maintaining access and how the investigator then represents the dynamic and conflicting nature of these communities. Gaining access is key to sustained ethnography, and yet such access depends heavily on the perception of the research and researcher within the community, in which cultural awareness and identity politics play a key role.
