Abstract

Matthew Desmond’s “Relational ethnography,” is a manifesto for a relational turn in ethnography, liberating it from the “substantialism” of bounded places, processed people and group culture. Substantialism, however, proves to be a largely mythical category that obscures two types of relational ethnography: Desmond’s empiricist transactional ethnography and an alternative, theoretically driven structural ethnography. Drawing on Desmond’s own ethnographies, On the Fireline and Evicted, I explore the limitations of his transactional ethnography—a “spontaneous sociology” that rejects the theoretical engagement and comparative logic. I elaborate and illustrate structural ethnography, drawing out the implications for public and policy sociology.