Analyzing ethnographic material from a global commodity chain (Mongolian cashmere)
Amishi Gandhi
Undergraduate Researcher
Policy Analysis Major (O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs)
Kathryn Graber
Faculty Mentor
Kathryn Graber (College of Arts & Sciences)
Project Description
This project examines the harvesting, processing, sale, and extended life of Mongolian cashmere as it moves around the globe. Better understanding supply chains is super important to contemporary political economy, and this project’s unique way of doing that is to focus on how the value of cashmere is worked out in interactions across the chain, such as between herders and their goats, between sellers and buyers, between photographers and models, and so on. The project has generated a large corpus of ethnographic materials, including interviews, video-recorded interactions, photographs, survey sheets, and fieldnotes. I’m currently working on a book based on this material, but there are lots of opportunities for spinoff articles and new directions. There are several possibilities for how a student researcher could help with this data, depending on your language skills and your interests.
Technology or Computational Component
Some options are working with NVivo to code existing data, compiling additional end-consumer data on Mongolian cashmere such as from fashion blogs, and working with new tools for data visualization. We will use the Qualitative Data Analysis Laboratory, which I co-direct.