Ethnography of parliamentary constituencies: Navigating the sensitivities of political research in Bangladesh

This chapter takes a critical look at using an ethnographic approach to investigate how parliamentarians’ interface with society is changing in Bangladesh. This investigation emphasizes the complex nature of ethnographic data by drawing on research in five diverse and heterogeneous constituencies in different regions of the country. I describe my experiences of conducting political research with a small team in tense, volatile and turbulent contexts. Through observations and narratives of different groups in constituencies, I explain how we have employed various strategies to deal with the challenges of constituency visits. For example, the turbulence made travel difficult at times; the sensitive issues meant that the ruling party workers tried to stop us talking about MPs’ roles and constituents were sometimes suspicious of our motives. The creation of a network of local-level volunteer ethnographers played a pivotal role in gaining access to informants and unpacking this complex politics. This approach goes beyond the usual patron–client relations we often find in South Asian research projects. It was a pragmatic strategy that not only generated rich ethnographic material but also raised complex ethical challenges related to power. Could such strategies even lead to neoliberal anthropology, justified on the grounds of working in a context of political violence? Finally, I remark on how an ethnographic approach to studying entangled power relations in constituencies requires a range of networks and relations by which ethnographers achieve continual navigation to study sensitivities.