[Air-l] ethnography and ethics

Thomas Koenig T.Koenig at lboro.ac.uk
Sun May 16 18:34:30 PDT 2004


Some random reply to Jonathan's thoughts:
At 05:34 14/05/2004, Jonathan Marshall wrote:
>thus I could appeal to 'fact':
>
>For many people the internet *is* ambiguous as to whether it is private or 
>public, (so is much non-internet space for that matter). Saying that one 
>part is really public and another is really private may be possible on 
>occasions but most things are not clearly marked, and cannot be 
>marked.  There are many different kinds of public, which for many will not 
>include the public of research.  Privacy and public are social constructs 
>and vague and often contradictory.  This is simply a 'fact' as far as i'm 
>concerned, and i'm a bit surprised that some people don't percieve it - 
>which opens up other questions i guess.

Sorry, but your "simple fact" is about the *perception* of Internet users, 
the point others made here is about the actual institutional arrangements. 
These are AFAIS it:

Public: Usenet, (most of the) WWW, Unmoderated Listserv, gopher
Private: email, non-anonymous ftp
Ambiguous: Moderated Listeserv, IRC

These are pretty straightforward categorizations, as anyone with an 
Internet access can access the data in the "public" category of the 
Internet. If you are unaware of the public  nature of these domains, then, 
special cases aside (minors, etc.), that's bad luck for you, in case you 
published something you'd rather would not want to be associated with.

Of course, "privacy and public are social constructs." What else should 
they be? However, that does not mean that their meaning is infinitely 
malleable. Almost any court in the world would consider *publishing* on the 
web *not* as a private act. If some people really do not understand that 
publishing on the Internet does give you a potentially enormous audience, 
they still cannot be relieved of their *responsibilities* of making their 
work available to almost anyone with an Internet access.

>I could appeal to 'self interest':
>
>you are much less likely to get sued, your work is likely to be more 
>acceptable to colleagues, or your work will be allowed by your university 
>ethics committee.

I hope that most colleagues still apply different criteria, when evaluating 
my research. If they think that "overt" research yields *in all 
circumstances* the best data, then I would challenge them to back up their 
claim with some evidence that contradicts that the large 
social-psychological literature that warns against experimenter effects and 
the like. Nobody says that "covered" research is in all circumstances 
better than "overt" research. But I would like to leave the judgement, 
which of the two strategies is advisable in *public* settings, to 
methodological rather than overly restrictive ethical considerations.

>I could appeal to a 'love of truth':
>
>When research is announced, you are then able to immerse yourself in the 
>world, feel everything, *and* ask the kinds of questions you would not be 
>able to ask other than as a researcher.  Likewise the more people are 
>inclined to trust you (and have tested that trust over a long period), the 
>better will be the information they give you, the more they are able to 
>criticise your work the better it will be, the deeper your understanding 
>will be.

Nobody on this listserv has argued that interviews are off-limits and that 
any research should be covert. There are good reasons to conduct "overt" 
research and interviews. Rather, some argued that *as a rule* you should 
"reveal" your researching activities.

I believe this is part of the in my view *problematic* tendency to 
empathize with the people one researches, a "passionate participation" 
(Lincoln 2002: 337), which leads to the assumption that "hiding the 
inquirer's intent is destructive of the aim of uncovering and improving 
constructions." (Guba & Lincoln 1994: 115).

At least in sociology, economics, and political science, I believe, that 
such proceeding is counterproductive, as (unconditional) empathy also risks 
the absorption of hegemony into one's theories. In fact, I would argue, 
that in order to perform a "critical" analysis of everyday life, it is 
imperative to "break" with everyday life categories (Bourdieu et al. [1973] 
1991), which in most cases runs counter the experiences of those researched.

>I could appeal to 'empathy':
>
>You are less likely to hurt people.

I trust, you mean hurting people in a non-physical and non-criminal way. 
Well, I'd say that hurting people emotionally is a hazard of life. Some 
people might indeed feel hurt by overt research, since they feel exploited 
as "research objects", while covered research published in an obscure 
sociology journal (and for the general public even AJS and ASR are obscure 
journals) might leave them unfazed. But that is besides the point. I have 
already mentioned, that good social research may "hurt" some people and 
make others happy.

>I could appeal to 'benefit to society':
>
>But what is considered to be of benefit to society is an ethical position 
>in itself, and hardly persuasive *by* itself. Even if the ideas espoused 
>do not produce the results claimed for them (as with 'free enterprise'), 
>then that is not a proof that those are ideas are not ethical.  Perhaps 
>struggling hard against fate is an ethical position.

I agree with you here more or less, but I cannot see any connection to the 
question, if covert research is ethically justified or not. I would reckon 
in most cases it is, but in many cases, it might still not be the best 
methodological strategy to conduct one's research.

Thomas

REFERENCES
Bourdieu, Pierre, Jean-Claude Chamboredon, and Jean-Claude Passeron. [1973] 
1991. The Craft of Sociology: Epistemological Preliminaries. Berlin, FR 
Germany: De Gruyter.

Guba, Egon. G and Yvonna S Lincoln. 1994. Competing Paradigms in 
Qualitative Research. In Handbook of qualitative research, edited by 
Denzin, Norman K and Yvonna S Lincoln. (Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publications).
Lincoln, Yvonna S. 2002. Emerging Criteria for Quality in Qualitative and 
Interpretative Research. In The qualitative inquiry reader, edited by 
Denzin, Norman K and Yvonna S Lincoln. (Thousand Oaks, CA. : Sage 
Publications).





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