[Air-l] ethnography and ethics

Thomas Koenig T.Koenig at lboro.ac.uk
Thu May 20 09:02:18 PDT 2004


Jon,

At 03:27 17/05/2004, you wrote:
> >>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,
>
>I must admit that i'm not clear what kind of 'fact' the public private 
>division could be other than perceptual and conventional.

"Perception" and "convention" are two different things. Those domains of 
the Internet that I mentioned below, are public by convention, however any 
single individual perceives them. The technique that makes the data on 
www/usenet available does not allow for effectively concealing the data 
from the general public, once a URI has been published or a posting has 
been posted.

If some people think their blogs or usenet discussion enjoy privacy 
protection, they are mistaken, their *perception* does not reflect the 
actual technical and institutional arrangements.

If you just fell off Mars and would not know, what kind of technique TV is, 
you might conceivably think, that the news anchor on TV could watch you 
watching the news, your *perception* of the lack of privacy would be false, 
you still would watch TV in private.

>As such, different people, in different social positions if you will, are 
>going to bring different social conventions to a field - especially when 
>it is relatively new to them.

There may be different concepts, about what *belongs* into the public 
realm, but as long as you are making any distinction between public and 
private, it will be hard to make an argument that Usenet and www are *not* 
public(ly available).

>  They may even play with the ambiguities for its frisson - as they play 
> with other ambiguities like that of presence and absence.

And they might very well, but that does not mean that I or anybody else 
have to adhere to their rules of the game. Those rules should be set by the 
appropriate legal authorities or follow from basic human rights, not by 
those involved in the game.

> > the point others made here is about the actual institutional arrangements.
> > These are AFAIS it:
>
>sorry i've no idea what an AFAIS is.

"as far as I see": Usenet jargon.

> > Public: Usenet, (most of the) WWW, Unmoderated Listserv, gopher
> > Private: email, non-anonymous ftp
> > Ambiguous: Moderated Listeserv, IRC
>
>who is is making these assumptions?

Common sense? The actual technical configuration and its institutional 
underpinnings, if you'd prefer the fancy answer.

>For me the classification is not by fiat but by the way people use the 
>things and what they say about them.  It is, if you will, an ethnographic 
>question - and i've seen a number of discussions with different points of 
>view - you could think of this as one of them :)  I have private parts of 
>my web site -which you might find hard to access.

If they are password protected or the relevant URIs have not been 
published, that's a different story. In fact, if there are no links to your 
private website parts, it is debatable, if they are even part of the www.

>I've certainly seen people say things on usenet which they probably 
>worried about in calmer moments (I would anyway). There are tales of 
>people in discussion groups stored areas deleting past posts and so on - 
>they obviously changed their minds about public and private later on.

Well, too late. Sorry. If you choose to publish something that in hindsight 
is embarrassing, then tough luck, indeed. You might apologize/distance 
yourself from a posting, you might even cancel it. But if someone has 
accessed it freely before your cancel, then he or she has all the right to 
quote you.

[...]
> > 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.
>
>hmm i'm not really sure that an ethical position (assuming someone knows 
>what such a thing might be) can be justified by "tough luck, I've just 
>defined your post as public".

It is not me or you who defines it as "public," but it follows 
straightforward from the technical setup and the institutional configuration.

> > Of course, "privacy and public are social constructs." What else should
> > they be? However, that does not mean that their meaning is infinitely
> > malleable.
>
>I don't think ambiguity means things are infintely malleable either - but 
>it does mean things are uncertain in many situations for many people.
>
> >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.
>
>Courts are not about ethics anyway, but about laws :)

I am unsure, what the smiley means (sarcasm?), but that his been my point 
throughout the discussion: That questions of ethics should be decided by 
universal human rights plus legal arrangements, provided that the latter 
are legitimized through some sort of democratic process.

>I suspect that the court might decide based upon the use of the data and 
>the situation.  Copyright could come in for example.  You are simply not 
>free to quote anything you want all the time.

Most of the time, I am, provided I observe some rules. I should declare the 
source, and the length of the quotation should be in a sensible relation to 
the length of my own word.  Copyright, as the name suggests, protects your 
intellectual rights to a document, but does not exempt that document from 
criticism or analysis.

For instance, the sentence in "Not to be downloaded or quoted without the 
author's permission" 
http://www.otago.ac.nz/Anthropology/asaanz/abstracts.html is legally void. 
If an author starts a web manuscript with "draft - do not quote", it is 
understood that out of professional *courtesy* you do not quote that paper, 
unless you have been granted permission by the author. But, let's say, for 
the argument's sake, that that draft is an elaborate racist theory. Then, 
of course, you are free to jettison professional courtesy in favor of more 
important norms.

Now, when it comes to "X-No-Archive: yes"-postings outside academia, you 
are not even bound by professional courtesy, if you want to quote or 
archive that material. You may extend that courtesy, but there frequently 
might be very good reasons to ignore such requests.

[...]

>I am not sure that hiding the researcher avoids the 'researcher effect' 
>either.

Of course it does. It may create different or even similar problems, but it 
sure does avoid such effects.

>And if you don't participate then often you won't get what is going one - 
>no access to the hidden life for example/
>
>Aplication of method probably is a matter of ethics, and probably vice 
>versa as well.

I am unsure, what you mean here, but IMO the application of a certain 
method should depend on the theory within the limits of ethical norms.


> > 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 would have thought that if you conduct interviews you are being overt.
>
>My argument, in part, rests on the assumption that ethical issues are 
>undecideable.
>I still hold that revealed work will, in general (and that's a caveat), 
>give you better results and make things easier.

"Make things easier" (not to be mistaken for simplicity or parsimony) 
certainly should not be a scientific criterion and I really do not see any 
data why "in general" so-called "revealed" work yields better data. It 
sometimes does, it sometimes does not, it always depends on the theory and 
the nature of the data required.

> > 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).
>
>there are plenty of ethnographies in which passionate participation has 
>lead people to dislike the people they have been with and to be highly 
>critical of them and their self represenations.
>But i'm not sure why the alternative to hidden study is passionate 
>participation.

It is, of course, not; I just observed the tendency in sociology and 
related sciences to sympathizes with the research subjects.

[...]

>I guess the success of Bordieu in breaking with everyday life categories 
>is debateable :)

What makes you think that way? I think most of his categories, like 
"habitus" or the forms of capital are fairly theoretical -- and good ones 
at that.

Thomas





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