When the Going Gets Weird: An Invitation to Gonzo Sociology

This paper serves as a call to reinvigorate the practice of “gonzo sociology,” an immersive, reflexive methodology which eschews rigidity and formulaic design in favor of innovative and imaginative research on places and peoples ignored by the academy. Employing an autoethnographic account of the author’s experiences researching the reconstruction of the Iraqi police force, this paper serves as both an invitation and a rough how-to guide for gonzo research projects. While a variety of factors—ranging from funding sources to time constraints to anxiety to institutional review concerns—make this type of unorthodox research difficult, it is argued this is exactly what makes it both a necessary corrective to the staid formalism of the field as well as an avenue for incorporating the voices of those least represented in the academy.