Thick description in applied contexts: using interpretative qualitative observations to form quantitative indicators in food security research

Journal article

With the drastic expansion of detention powers afforded to European member states by the 2011 Return Directive, conceptual and methodological approaches common in the United States, such as structural violence and ‘community-based research and service learning' (CBRSL), are potentially of great significance in documenting the suffering these cuts inflict on detained asylum-seekers in the possible form of food insecurity. This article proposes a methodology capable of operating from a limited window of observation, taking as its ethnographic basis a 2009 study in a low-income US urban elementary school in which interpretative local ‘thick' descriptions of food-insecure behaviour informed quantitative indicators. Within this framework, the scope and pattern of food insecurity among the schoolchildren were illustrated, influencing local policies to address the problem. It is hoped that this methodology will influence foodsecurity studies of detained populations in Europe, as well as methodology within applied anthropology as a whole.

Authors: Vimont, M

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Anthropological Society of Oxford
• Journal: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford Online
• Volume: 7
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 191-204
• Publication date: 2015-01-01
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-7r1pmpmrg
• ISSN: 2040-1876
• Language: English
• Keywords: JASO