Qualitative research is sometimes criticized as being “non-scientific” or subjective because it is based on the researcher’s own interpretation of their data. Briefly describe this criticism, and offer a counter-critique that is supported by at least three course readings(attached files).
What is the value and contribution of qualitative research?
A few reminders:
1) Engage deeply with the course readings and information from lectures, rather than just referring to them in passing (but no need to provide a works cited page)
2) Do not use *anything* from other courses or from the internet.
3) Type essay into a separate Word document
Qual Sociol (2006) 29:155–175
DOI 10.1007/s11133-006-9011-3
ORIGINAL PAPER
Into the Dark Heart of Ethnography: The Lived Ethics
and Inequality of Intimate Field Relationships
Katherine Irwin
Published online: 8 June 2006
C Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006
Abstract In response to critiques from feminist, existential, and postmodern qualitative
researchers, the idea of maintaining objective and distant relationships with research subjects
gave way to the belief that researchers could and, in some cases, should become intimately
connected to research participants. These traditions opened the door for contemporary field
workers to unapologetically forge close relationships to setting members. Several ethical
evaluations have emerged from this intimate literature warning researchers of the harm that
can come when we “go to far” in the quest for intimate familiarity. In this paper, I reflect on
some of the debates regarding intimacy and exploitation by examining my experiences of
dating, marrying, and eventually divorcing my key informant. I trace the way that, despite my
attempts to follow the existing ethical guides, I reinforced several larger inequalities in my
intimate stance. Using my failure to avoid or mitigate harm, I argue that our discussions of
intimate methods and immersion in the field have failed to accurately note how we reinforce or
resist structure in our research endeavors. Viewing ourselves as “doing structure” in the field
would lead us to stop debating whether intimacy is better than objectivity, celibacy is better
than sex, disclosure is better than silence, or conventional behavior is better than deviance in
the field. Instead, we should locate how our behaviors, research roles, or discursive choices
enact structures and the effect this enactment has on the people who we research.
Keywords Intimate methods . Emotions and fieldwork . Experiential immersion .
Research ethics . Vulnerable populations
Introduction
By the end of the 1990s, the feminist, existential, and postmodern research traditions had
lifted the veil of objectivity shrouding the scientific method. Not only did these paradigms
K. Irwin ()
Department of Sociology, University of Hawai’i,
Manoa, Saunders Hall, 247, Honolulu, HI 96825
e-mail: kirwin@hawaii.edu
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provide a boost to qualitative sociology, but the ensuing celebration of the subjective nature
of research inspired a collection of personal methodological tales focusing attention on
researchers’ sexual (Bolton, 1991, 1995, 1996; Cesara, 1982; Davis, 1986; Goode, 1999,
2002; Johnson, 1975; Kulick & Willson, 1995; Lee, 1978, 1979; Murray, 1996; Palson &
Palson, 1972; Rabinow, 1977; Schneebaum, 1969; Stewart, 1972; Styles, 1979; Turnbull,
1986; Van Lieshout, 1995; Wade, 1993), loving (Blackwood, 1995; Gearing, 1995; Newton,
1993), or emotional (Ellis & Flaherty, 1992; Gubrium & Holstein, 1997) immersion in
the field. Although late twentieth-century qualitative researchers were always encouraged
to gain “intimate familiarity” with their subjects (Lofland & Lofland, 1995), what makes
these contemporary treatments of field intimacy different is that intimate encounters are
no longer merely interesting methodological side-notes. They are now central topics of
investigation.
In the late 1990s, I began to pay special heed to the emerging intimate ethnographic
tradition. The reasons for my interest in this type of ethnography were personal. Fascinated
with the topic of deviance and, especially, deviant occupations, I had begun researching
my boyfriend’s tattoo shop, called the Blue Mosque, and realized immediately that being
in love with my key informant—who eventually became my husband during the course
of my study—would influence almost every aspect of my research and personal life. Initially, I felt encouraged by the intimate trend in ethnography and believed that my relationship would be seen as a sign of my emotional immersion in and deep commitment
to the setting. I was, however, concerned about research ethics and began to scour the
intimate methods literature in search of useful guides to help me to avoid harming field
members.
Although I delighted in the increasing acceptance of intimate stances in the field and
closely followed the ethical guidelines governing intimacy, in the end, I realized that my
research role opened the door for painful power imbalances that held tragic implications for
my husband, Lefty Blue,1 and me—even more tragic than the consequences associated with
remaining distant, unemotional, and objective. This led me to return to some of the models
regarding intimacy in the field. While I initially agreed with most of the methodological
claims, I found when my marriage and research ended that harm and injustice operated quite
differently from what had been suggested.
In the following sections of the paper, I review the claims for and ethical warnings within
the intimate research tradition. Examining this literature closely, I argue that the literature
has focused most of its attention on the micro-contexts in which exploitation and harm
occur, at the expense of locating our ethical discussions in a larger structural context. By
structure, I mean the properties encouraging social practices (especially inequalities) to
become patterned and systematic over time and space.2 In the next section of the paper, I
1
All the names of people and places (except for Hawai’i) in this paper are pseudonyms.
2
I am drawing very specifically from Giddens’ (1984) structuration theory in this definition rather than
from classic ethnomethodological treatments of structure, despite the fact that ethnomethodologists are often
credited with advancing the “doing structure” concept. I prefer Giddens’ definition because it evokes the many
discursive and non-discursive ways that systematic inequalities among and between actors (say between a
man and woman in a particular context) and collectives (say between deviant subcultures and conventional
society) are enacted or resisted. In addition, Giddens’ definition of structure, which revolves around the
properties making regularized practices possible, focuses attention on the rules and resources that underlie
and are activated during interactions. Therefore, when a heavily tattooed person is spat at in public or denied
service in a restaurant, this is evidence of an often unspoken, tacit rule that is being evoked and sustained. In
addition, it also serves as a moment when power enters the scene by influencing actors’ access to resources
(status and/or material).
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explore the ups and downs of my journey through my research and close relationships and
describe the ways that I tried to use the ethical guides. As I noted, to avoid exploitation, I
used several interpersonal strategies that did very little, in the end, to help me avoid hurting
and damaging my husband. In fact, despite my best intentions, I found that my intimate
field stance actually reinforced several inequalities and, when we tried to resist them, we
were crushed by our efforts. Finally, I look back at the end of the research and my marriage
and conclude that the ethical guides and debates surrounding subjectivity, intimacy, and
immersion have focused on the micro-contexts of exploitation and harm. They have failed
to trace the way that we enact structure in the field and how our “doing structure” negatively
or positively affects setting members.
Intimacy and ethics
To date, intimacy in field methods has been supported by three paradigms: the interpretive,
feminist, and postmodern. Eschewing objective, distant, and emotionally detached research
stances for slightly different reasons, each of these traditions has opened the door for researchers to forge and disclose deeply personal, close, and emotional field work encounters.
Emerging from this call to intimacy has been a set of ethical debates highlighting the problems associated with personal and emotional immersion in the field. Interestingly, the ethical
writings have primarily focused scholarly attention on the individual behaviors and choices
in the field. The result has been a growing literature on the micro-politics of research ethics
that focuses our attention on a litany of minor research decisions at the expense of understanding, articulating, and pointing out the structural sources and processes of inequality and
harm.
Within the contemporary interpretive paradigm, researchers are encouraged to get close,
go in deep, and participate intimately in the life world. Wacquant (2004, p. viii) dubbed this
type of work “carnal sociology” in which ethnographers “submit to the fire of action in situ”
and experience the taste, ache, and action of their settings. That authors contributing to the
July 2005, Qualitative Sociology Symposium have nearly universally applauded Wacquat’s
(2004) call to moral and sensual immersion in the field provides further evidence of a
distinct methodological moment in sociology. To throw one’s self into the field, body and
soul, is now not only a valid research stance, but marks investigatory excellence. Complete
bodily and emotional immersion, however, has not always been celebrated. First and Second
Chicago School ethnographers often attempted to avoid “over-rapport” and bias by striking
a balance between empathetic participation and complete engagement with field members.
The case for intimate involvement came in the late 1960s and early 1970s when existentialist
ethnographers argued that complete immersion is necessary to penetrate fronts (Goffman,
1959), to dive underneath the surface of accounts (Douglas & Johnson, 1977), and to truly
understand the world as an insider experiences it. Over time, instead of being critiqued
for their over-involvement, researchers who became deeply immersed in their settings were
praised for having better data and much more complex and sophisticated renderings of their
subjects.3 Probably the most forceful contemporary statement for complete immersion in the
field is Ferrell and Hamm’s Ethnography at the Edge (1998a, 1998b) in which they argue
3
Duneier’s (1999) Sidewalk, for example, has been hailed as “intensely personal” (Manning, 2001, p. 15)
and Fine (2004, p. 506) writes of Wacquant’s (2004) Body and Soul that “few other field essays so instantly
immerse us into social (and economic) worlds as hauntingly and eloquently as this.”
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that sharing in the “pleasures and dangers” of a setting can render a more accurate picture of
the lived realities in which crime and deviance take place.4
Despite the celebration of participation in the pleasure and dangers of the field, a few
scholars have argued that ethnographers can go too far in the quest for intimate familiarity. For
example, Goode’s (1999, 2002) accounts of sex with informants have touched off a collection
of ethical warnings. The arguments against Goode included that researchers can turn subjects
into sexual (or emotional) targets or prey (Saguy, 2002), mislead subjects regarding research
and emotional intentions (Saguy, 2002; Williams, 2002), and fail to recognize the power
imbalances between researcher and subject5 (Bell, 2002; Williams, 2002). Furthermore,
Bryant (1999) and Manning (2002) argue that Goode’s intimate disclosures are gratuitous and
spurious and fail to say anything about the dimensions and features of the study population
(Bryant, 1999; Manning, 2002).6
Another argument for intimacy in the field, predominantly espoused within feminist research, is that emotional connection is less exploitative of research participants than an
objective stance. In her classic work, Oakley (1981) argued that remaining detached and
distant while research subjects bared their souls underscored and perpetuated inequalities
between researchers and subjects. According to this perspective, subjective, intimate, and
emotionally close relationships in the field, at least on the surface, promised to correct the
inequalities embedded in the masculine scientific tradition by emphasizing everything that
had been suppressed and devalued in patriarchal divisions between objectivity/subjectivity,
distance/intimacy, and rationality/emotionality. Following these critiques, it became common for feminist researchers to argue for emotional connection (Ribbens, 1989) and deep
commitment to field members (see Acker, Barry, & Esseveld, 1996; Cotterill, 1992; Finch,
1984; Gorelick, 1991; Kirsch, 1999; Patai, 1991).
Despite the call for “no intimacy without reciprocity” (Oakley, 1981), many feminist
researchers note that intimacy is not a panacea for exploitation. For example, Stacey (1988,
p. 23) argued that “fieldwork represents an intrusion and intervention into a system of relationships” that, although sometimes satisfying, work to benefit the researcher much more
than the participant. Stacey (1988); Finch (1984); Acker et al. (1983); Cotterill (1992);
Gorelick (1991); Kirsch (1999); and Patai (1991) have all expressed feelings of “inauthenticity” in their research relationships and have noted that friendships and friendliness can be
false and easily manipulated to hide the true goal of the relationship: to obtain rich data. Some
have also noted that the researcher’s ability to leave the field marks an additional inequality
in research relationships. On this subject, Stacey (1988, p. 26) argues that “beneficiaries of
such attention may also come to depend upon it, and this suggests another ethical quandary
in fieldwork, the potential for, indeed the likelihood of, desertion by the researcher.”
Supporting intimacy in the field from a different angle, postmodernists have argued that
intimate disclosures can change and challenge colonizing research traditions. Viewing ethnographers as historically located and their texts as “constructed, artificial. . . cultural accounts”
4 For their intimate engagement, authors in Farrell and Hamm’s collection have been praised as being “intrepid
brave souls” (Adler & Adler, 1998b).
5 Bell (2002) argues that because researchers have more power than research subjects and men have more
power than women, that male researchers having sex with female informants is unethical.
6
Ferrell and Hamm (1998b) also highlight research ethics, which they call “lived politics,” of full immersion in
settings. They (Ferrell & Hamm, 1998b, pp. 7–8) argue that despite personal and professional “thrill-seeking”
satisfaction for the researcher, some research topics (especially deviant and criminal ones) put researchers at
risk for unusual trouble with gatekeepers, stigmatization, physical danger, moral compromise, and self doubt.
While this is true, in this paper I want to focus on the effect of experiential immersion—in my case, intimate
relationships—on research participants.
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(Clifford, 1986, p. 3), postmodern, post-structural, and postcolonial researchers have viewed
the distant, objective ethnographic voice of traditional narratives as a fiction “based on systematic, and contestable, exclusions” (Clifford, 1986, p. 6). Because researchers’ emotions,
desires, and intimate relationships in the field are among the many “exclusions” from the
ethnographic canon, focusing on silenced or taboo subjects repositions the ethnographer
and ethnography in the production of knowledge. For example, Kulick (1995, p. 4) uses
this very argument to support an emerging methodology of desire and argues that writing
about researchers’ intimate behaviors in the field alters the “unidirectional discourse about
the sexuality of the people we study.”
The postmodern call for alternative discourses has launched an obsession with writing
form. If traditional ethnographic texts have silenced, colonized, and misrepresented the
people who we study, then the key has been to craft a different narrative style. For example,
proponents of such experimental or “new” ethnography as novels, short stories, poetry,
letters, speeches, films, plays, or blended accounts, argue that these non-traditional narratives
liberate social science from homophobic traditions (Clough, 1994), move to center stage
silenced or marginalized voices (Rose, 1990, 1991), decrease barriers between researchers
and subjects (Finn, 1995; Gordon, 1995), reach—and potentially mobilize—larger audiences
(Behar, 1995), or represent multiple voices and perspectives (Denzin, 1997; Kondo, 1990;
Trinh, 1989).7 Ronai (1995, p. 423) argued that narrative form and content is no minor
consideration when she equated traditional, detached, and objective writing—the kind of
writing that reviewers asked her to produce—to an “abusive patriarch who demands the
silence of his children.”
Taken in combination, the interpretive, feminist, and postmodern traditions have seemed to
argue that intimate methods, and especially our accounts of intimacy in the field, can be more
accurate, less exploitative, and less “colonizing” than objective and distant methods. This
would imply that concerns about inequality, power, and social location bolster the intimate
research tradition. On the topic of ethics, however, each of these three paradigms has become
excessively bogged down in micro-concerns and has failed to link the everyday research
experience to larger practices, relationships, and inequalities. For example, according to
these ethical guides, if researchers want to mitigate exploitation and harm they should avoid
indiscriminate sex with subjects (especially those who are less powerful than researchers),
acknowledge that their relationships with informants might be manipulative, fully disclose
research and emotional intentions to informants, and not write sexy, violent, voyeuristic, or
self-obsessed narratives that do more to pique lurid attention than to meaningfully describe
research settings. Researchers should also consider the writing process carefully and find
ways to write against the traditional ethnographic canon.
In the end, the ethical problems and solutions within each of these three paradigms
are pitched at the level of: (1) how to behave when researchers are in the field and (2)
how to write about the field. Although these debates give a nod to structural power (they
acknowledge that there are power distinctions between researchers and subjects and that
researchers, informants, and discourses are situated within power relations), they fail to
meaningfully analyze how researchers’ behaviors and writing reinforce, enact, or resist
these power relations and distinctions. Moreover, they present a static image of ethics as
a behavioral formula in which certain choices (i.e. having casual sex with informants,
7 Feminist researchers have also been concerned about writing form and have made similar claims that nontraditional social science writing is better able to represent multiple, often marginalized, perspectives, reach
and mobilize large audiences, and be personally liberating (Anzaldua & Keating, 2002; Collins, 1991; Moraga
& Anzaldua, 2002).
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making research goals a priority over relationships, and producing traditional academic
discourse) are viewed as always and everywhere problematic. By failing to view all of our
research behaviors as engaging in structure, these ethical warnings fail to see inequality and
exploitation as dynamic forces that can occur regardless of whether we follow the ethical
formulas and codes. More than this, they mislead us regarding the way that inequality, harm,
and exploitation function in the lived research experience and, in so doing, distract us with
a litany of minor concerns.
On the methodological edge
Fieldwork, in many respects, has been considered exceedingly edgy. As outsiders angling for
insider knowledge, professionals dependent on personal relationships for data, and members
of research settings as well as the academy, field researchers ride the lines between and
across multiple boundaries, and the journey, as many have attested, can be emotionally and
existentially uncomfortable. Researchers give many names to this brand of discomfort. Some
have discussed experiencing culture shock, while others have written about marginality, selfdoubt, or just plain insecurity. Ferrell and Hamm (1998a) add another dimension to the
concept of field research as “edge work” by arguing that criminal or deviant settings force
researchers to grapple with the lines between legality and illegality, discredit and legitimacy,
and morality and debauchery. The resulting emotions, according to Ferrell and Hamm (1998b,
p. 2), are adrenaline-infused tangles of “. . .pleasure, excitement, and fear.”
My experiences in researching the world of professional tattooing resonated with these
accounts. I experienced marginality, conflicting loyalty pulls, professional and personal
angst, moments of intense pleasure and joy, as well as devastating bouts of self-doubt and
failure. Although these were the daily obsessions of my research, they did not comprise the
forces that ultimately mattered. The most salient aspect of my intimate research stance was
the institutionalized divisions and inequalities between my husband’s deviant subculture and
my world of professional academics and the way we reinforced and attempted to resist them.
Although I imagined that loving and marrying a member of the field would create a bridge
between these very different worlds, in the end I was wrong and we were both devastated
by our attempts to gain a permanent place in each other’s lives and settings. This is where
the lived politics of research, especially research in deviant or criminal settings, becomes
unambiguous. Becoming intimately close to setting members can do more harm than good.
Falling into the field
My first introduction to the Blue Mosque was in the spring of 1996, during my fourth semester
of graduate school. I took a break from studying to accompany my friends as they received
their first tattoos. I was immediately infatuated with the clean, comfortable shop, the different
types of tattoo clients, and especially with the five Blue Mosque tattooists: Lorna, Mark,
John, Thomas, and Lefty. All the tattooists were white, from middle-class backgrounds, in
their mid- to late twenties, and were interested in breaking conventional norms. The most
blatant evidence of their taste for the outlandish was their appearance. Covered from neck to
toe8 in bright, big tattoos and sporting multiple body piercings, including lip, nose, tongue,
and eyebrow rings, they were, quite literally, a colorful cast of characters. The dramatic image
8
None of the artists had face tattoos.
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that they projected—an image that conventional individuals might describe as alarming and
freakish—expressed their lifelong commitment to living outside of mainstream America.
While my friends found the foray into the tattooists’ world interesting, the experience struck
me more deeply. By the end of the tattoo sessions, I was smitten with Lefty and his shop. In
the next few months, I returned to the Blue Mosque several times and became friends with
the tattooists. Eventually, Lefty and I began dating.
My introduction to hardcore tattooing (i.e., the world of professional tattoo artists and
tattoo collectors who were covering their bodies with tattoos) then, began as a personal
pursuit, as I have presented it here and elsewhere. Although I did not contemplate studying
this world during my first few months of dating Lefty, I was a sociology graduate student
and could not help but “analyze” this community. Lefty listened to my reflections about
his world and my descriptions of the deviance literature, and offered his own analysis of
the structure and organizational features of the hardcore tattoo subculture. Having read the
work of Sanders (1989), a sociologist and tattoo collector, Lefty was familiar with field
work methods and the writing and analysis produced by these endeavors. It is not surprising,
given this, that during one of our conversations about the tattoo industry and lifestyle,
Lefty suggested that someone should conduct a study to note the many changes that had
occurred in tattooing since Sanders’ work. I agreed, but did not take up the task until I
enrolled in a graduate field methods course and needed to find a setting to study for the
year.
Initially, the project seemed exciting and my role as a girlfriend offered some advantages.
Echoing the call to start where you are and gain intimate familiarity (Lofland & Lofland,
1995), my advisor encouraged me to use my intimate connection with this world as an
advantage to access and immersion in the setting. I also quickly noted that, unlike other
ethnographers (see Mitchell, 1991), I enjoyed this setting and liked, even loved, the people
in it, which seemed to be a boon, given the discrediting of fieldworkers who loathe the
populations they study. In our early conversations about the research, Lefty offered some
provocative insights to convince me to take on this project. He pointed out that numerous
journalists and researchers were investigating tattooing and its increasing popularity, and, in
his view, were offering derogatory and inaccurate depictions (for exceptions, see DeMello,
1993; Vail, 1999a, 1999b). Here, we both imagined that the research might be beneficial. I
assumed that I could use the research to demonstrate that the heavily-tattooed were not the
dangerous and exotic other, and Lefty felt that his profession might gain more conventional
credibility and legitimacy as a result of the work.
Once I had taken Lefty’s suggestion seriously, I became very uneasy about the project, and
the readings I completed for my methods course that semester only increased my anxieties.
One concern that quickly came to the fore was maintaining access to data. Having met
several tattooists’ ex-girlfriends, I realized that I was hinging my research entirely on a
potentially unstable union. This troubled me. What concerned me more than the stories of
failed fieldwork projects was harming study members whom I believed to be a vulnerable
group. I made this vulnerability assumption after witnessing occasions when Lefty or our
friends were sneered at, refused service in restaurants, followed by suspicious security guards
in stores, verbally insulted, or spat upon by individuals who viewed people who had covered
their bodies with tattoos as extremely threatening and dangerous. The fact that I could roam
freely and without comment in conventional settings suggested to me that I had more power
than this heavily tattooed crew. Moreover, the fact that I was engaging in a sexual and
romantic relationship with a field member—a topic that was gaining increasing attention at
the time—meant that I needed to tread very carefully.
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Hoping to avoid preying upon or misleading research subjects, I continually communicated to Lefty my dedication to our relationship and informed Lefty and our closest friends
about my research progress. This meant more than going covert about researching tattooing,
and led me to explain what topics I was exploring in my field and analytical notes, discus
what avenues I was thinking of pursuing for papers, and share my fledgling theoretical ideas
with the group. Despite this, waves of guilt and anguish came over me each night as I went
home to write field notes. I perpetually felt like a spy and worried that I was gaining much
more from this group than they were going to receive from my research. The only thing that
I could offer was my friendship, admiration, and the promise that the product of my work
might help lend some legitimacy and understanding to the world of hardcore tattooing.9
Although I felt that I needed to acknowledge the power differences between the heavily
tattooed and myself and to make sure that I was not taking advantage of setting members,
I found that this power was a bit more elusive and fluid during my everyday interactions in
the field. Unlike heavily tattooed members of the study, I never attracted instant suspicion
or invasive amazement by strangers. In contrast, strangers routinely, and without invitation,
would reach out to touch tattooees’ exposed skin or lift their clothing to get a good look
at a large tattoo. This did not mean, however, that I was always and everywhere more
powerful than Lefty or other members of the study. Without many tattoos (I acquired two
relatively small tattoos during the research), I was seen as having a low commitment to
the subculture. My credibility, it was clear, came from my association with Lefty. Certainly
many ethnographers find this type of dependence upon informants for data to be unsettling.
This dependence was double-edged for me because my low status as a tattoo novice was
coupled with larger gender inequalities within and surrounding the community (see Warren,
1988).
Although there were more female tattooists at the time of my study than in any previous era, tattooing was a male-dominated profession. Through male networks, men were
able to learn such trade information as machine mechanics, needle construction, and tattoo application more easily than women (Mifflin, 1997). On some occasions, I witnessed
tattooists and hardcore tattoo collectors discussing “tattoo babes,” women who were both
heavily tattooed and at the same time matched white, middle-class beauty standards (thin,
clear skin, petite features). Tattoo magazines, which usually placed on their covers scantily
clad and tattooed women in sexually provocative poses, reinforced the idea that women
were tokens and sexual objects in the community. By initiating my research as “Lefty’s girlfriend,” rather than entering the field as an anonymous researcher, I would never be outside
the gender hierarchies in the community. I would be judged like any other girlfriend in the
setting. This was the uncomfortable bargain I would have to make for my intimate type of
research.
From the outset of this research, I experienced multiple anxieties. I worried about taking
advantage of my boyfriend and new friends by misrepresenting them and offering them very
little in return for their intimate confidences. As time progressed, I also became concerned
about the gender inequalities in the community. More than observing these dynamics as an
outsider, I felt limited by them daily. Although, I initially believed that researchers have
more power than research subjects, being immersed in the lived realities of the setting often
made me feel very powerless and helpless. Numerous ethical concerns during the early
stages of research preoccupied me with undertaking a litany of tasks to protect against harm.
9 This made me even more conscious of my writing. I wanted desperately to avoid offering another voyeuristic
installment of what Liazos (1972) called the “nuts and sluts” brand of deviance research.
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Ironically, while these ethical strategies were designed to overcome inequality, hierarchy,
and exploitation, they ultimately dragged me down a fruitless path.
Falling out of the field
Aware that any small, personal infractions or misunderstandings can blow up into major
breaches in trust, ethnographers use many techniques to maintain positive relations, including
providing services for others (Adler, 1993), manipulating their appearance and demeanor
(Van Maanen, 1991), and forging close ties with key setting members (Liebow, 1967).
However, relationships cool, trust is broken, and sometimes researchers are exiled from the
field. The nature of field relationships, especially the sometimes daunting call to remain
non-exploitative (see Reinharz, 1993), coupled with the general volatility of romance, made
the girlfriend role a precarious one and carried numerous pressures for both Lefty and me.
These and other pressures eventually ended our relationship and the girlfriend role for a short
time.
The girlfriend role not only made me preoccupied with being a “non-exploitative” researcher, my research also unduly burdened Lefty with a score of obligations to our relationship and my work. When we first met and began dating, Lefty had been separated from
his wife for one year. At the time, Lefty explained that he and his wife were on their way
to an amicable divorce and had worked through their grief. Despite these early assurances,
he was overcome with feelings of emotional failure during the first year of our relationship.
The prospect of committing to me and risking failure in yet another relationship proved
debilitating and all-consuming. Making our relationship more stressful, he felt he could not
break up with me because he had promised to assist my research. By November of 1996,
Lefty and I had become a particularly tense couple. I spent most of my time trying to craft
an ideal research project—that would not harm or misrepresent study members—he spent
most of his time grieving for his failed marriage and trying desperately not to “let me down.”
After several tear-filled conversations, Lefty and I separated. My worst fears were realized.
I had lost my relationship, my friendships, and my research. I had failed.
Surprisingly, the breakup was a relief. Exiled from my research, I stopped worrying about
exploiting others, spying on friends, fighting injustices, opening avenues for emancipation,
or being relegated to the uncomfortable role of the traditional tattooist’s girlfriend. I realized
that by keeping my feelings and behaviors under meticulous scrutiny and holding myself to
many lofty research demands, I had become preoccupied with the research (especially the
harms that can come from it) and had made it my first priority. I had stopped living my life.
As an ex-girlfriend and an ex-researcher, I was free from the burden of research and all of
its obligations and responsibilities.
To my surprise, slipping into the ex-girlfriend status did not segregate me from the other
tattooists. Lorna included me in social events at the shop. During this time, I ignored any
research and focused exclusively on my friendships, and, in return, I received considerable
support and kindness from this group. A few months after Lefty’s and my breakup, I settled
into a routine of occasionally going out to dinner, movies, and musical shows with Lorna,
Lefty, and the other tattooists.
As soon as I ended my research and all of its dilemmas, solidified my friendships with the
tattooists, and repaired relations with Lefty, I began to witness increasingly tense interactions
among the tattooists. Growing frustrated with the town around the Blue Mosque and hungry
for new challenges, Lorna, Thomas, and John talked about leaving the Blue Mosque to
open their own shop in another part of the country. Worried that he would have to close the
shop, Lefty expressed considerable anxiety at the prospect of losing these artists. As their
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departure date approached, the conflicts within this group mounted and I often found myself
torn between what had become two factions in the shop: those who wanted to leave the Blue
Mosque and those who wanted to stay.
Although frustrated by these loyalty pulls, I was delighted to discover that these interpersonal antagonisms had nothing to do with me or my research. I felt no pressure to analyze the
scenarios, apply theories, or to sociologically understand the unfolding events. Furthermore,
I felt no obligation to correct any harms. It was a comfort to take the position of supportive
friend and let events naturally evolve. To me, this felt “authentic.” Later, when writing about
this phase of the research, I wondered if this was the type of “authenticity” discussed by
feminist researchers (Acker et al., 1996; Cotterill, 1992; Finch, 1984; Gorelick, 1991; Kirsch,
1999; Patai, 1991; Stacey, 1988) who described feeling torn between their commitment to
research participants and their research goals.
At this stage, I began to question the nature of harm and inequality and redrafted, although
tenuously, my relationship to and responsibility for exploitation. The schism in the shop also
made me abandon my obsession with situational ethics. I realized that by attempting to
meticulously apply the many ethical codes in the literature, and to control, correct, and fight
every injustice, I had crafted an unnatural, unrealistic research project and relationships.
Because I believed that researchers usually have more power than research participants, I felt
that I had more responsibility to overcome injustices. In essence, the ethical advice I gleaned
from the literature did not assist my efforts and became a burdensome and long list of correct
and incorrect behaviors. By being a friend rather than a researcher, I stopped focusing on the
ethical codes and responsibilities that accompany research. Giving up the research opened
the door for deeper and more intense commitments to the group.
Making up
Having weathered the ups and downs of field relationships, many researchers have reported
feeling as close as kin to study members during the latter stages of their fieldwork. Some
researchers were adopted by families in the field and a few, like me, married setting members
(Gearing, 1995; Lois, 2003). Forging deep and sometimes even permanent ties to the field
introduces a complex set of considerations to fieldwork, including negotiating spousal roles
in the field (Adler, 1993; Adler & Adler, 1991, 1998a, 2004; Corbin & Corbin, 1984; Oboler,
1986; Scheper-Hughes, 1992; Schrijvers, 1993; Vera-Sanso, 1993; Wolf, 1992), dealing with
pressures to “go native,” and negotiating the end of research (Gallmeier, 1991; Snow, 1980).
After Lorna, Thomas, and John moved, I continued my friendship with Lefty and Mark
(who remained at the shop). Instead of closing the Blue Mosque, Lefty recruited two new
tattooists, Francis and Rubin, whose arrival marked the beginning of new friendships and
a new era for the shop. In fact, there were many new beginnings at that time. Without the
pressures of my research and having recovered from his divorce, Lefty felt free to pursue our
relationship again. Although I was initially reluctant, I gave our romance another chance. In
fact, Lefty and I remained committed to each other throughout my graduate school years.
After two years of dating, Lefty and I married. The wedding itself was a special, intimate
occasion attended by our parents, siblings, and Blue Mosque tattooists and regular clients.
Further cementing my connection to the tattoo world, Mark moved in with us. This time in
all of our lives was accompanied by a frenzy of tattoo activity. The three of us frequently
traveled to tattoo conventions around the country and Europe and, when we were not on the
road, several tattooists from around the country stayed with us while they worked “guest
spots” at the Blue Mosque. Our apartment, located a few blocks from the Blue Mosque,
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became the after-hours meeting location where tattooists and regular clients wound down
from difficult tattoo sessions.
When Lefty and I reunited, I had completed my third year of graduate school and,
according to my advisor who kept an eye on my progress through the department, I was
falling behind in my dissertation work. To help me catch up, she encouraged me to meet
with her during her office hours to discuss research progress. I felt conflicted. I did not want
to turn my private life into a research topic again, nor did I want to become enmeshed in
any other setting. In essence, I had become completely uninterested in the research and had
focused primarily on being a good-faith member (see Adler & Adler, 1987) of the Blue
Mosque. I conducted no interviews and was uninterested in examining or negotiating “my
research role” and saw my meetings with my advisor as a chance to chat about interesting
aspects of my life. This satisfied her for a short time.
When I entered my fourth year of graduate school, my advisor warned me that I needed to
progress in my dissertation or risk failure in the program. I discussed my concerns with Lefty,
Mark, and our closest friends. I explained my dilemma and worries regarding exploitation,
misrepresentation, and the heavy burdens of research. My husband and friends, however,
felt that I was being overly sensitive and cautious. They also offered to help me as much as
they could if I took up the work again. As in my first formal research attempt, I drew from
feminist research perspectives (Acker et al., 1996; DeVault, 1990; Mies, 1993; Smith, 1974,
1987; Stanley & Wise, 1983) by viewing Lefty and our friends as research collaborators.
I talked openly about the status of my writing, checked my thoughts and ideas with Lefty
and our friends, and invited everyone to read my writing. In fact, I often left my unfinished
papers out around the apartment for anyone to read. There were also several moments when
I became stuck while writing and ventured out to the living room with my portable computer
in hand, asking Lefty, Mark, and other tattooists and collectors visiting our house to help
me. I eagerly took down what they offered, changed what I was writing, and read back to
them the final product. Using these methods, I completed my dissertation and published two
papers on the topic of tattooing.
Formal research progressed much more smoothly after my marriage than before. After
marriage, I no longer felt like a spy, worried about misrepresenting or misinterpreting the
tattoo world, or about harming members of my study. I would like to say that this smoother
course was because of all the steps I took to avoid harm, including collaborating with study
members, opening my work to their critiques, and acknowledging power differences. The
changes, however, came because of marriage, which altered how I related to many traditional
expectations and relationships inside of and outside of the community.10 Certainly, marriage
signaled to me and to the setting members that I was committed to the world of tattooing
in ways that went beyond my research. I no longer felt or worried about coming off as an
outsider reporting on the exotic and strange lives of hardcore tattooists and collectors. Also,
Lefty and I conformed to many larger gender expectations that are traditionally reinforced
through marriage. Lefty played the part of the careerist husband and, by following his
profession around the globe and doting on his business associates and friends, I performed
the part of dutiful wife, eager and happy to support my husband’s career. That I made his
world the center of my writing further reinforced traditional gender relationships. Moreover,
my graduate student status allowed me the flexibility to do this and shielded me from
10 Marriage solved some of my initial qualms about the girlfriend role. Because marriage was a well respected
institution within the tattooing subculture, wives were not evaluated by the same criteria as girlfriends. Setting
members rarely discussed wives’ physical appearance or their sexual attractiveness, which was a significant
relief to me.
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full professional academic expectations. Similarly, the research also reinforced traditional
ethnographic relationships where Lefty served as the ideal research subject. He introduced
me to key players in the community, helped me to set up interviews, and completely opened
himself and his world to the researcher’s gaze. He was my subject, morning, noon, and night,
and because we were in love, he did not mind. In this way, my research goals were served
very well. That I was uncomfortable with this arrangement at times was beside the point.
My marriage allowed me unprecedented access and immersion into a world that few other
conventional individuals could ever penetrate.
Endings
The ability to leave the field and return to the everyday academic world is often viewed as
a significant power distinction between researchers and subjects (see Gottfried, 1996, p. 15;
Kirsch, 1999; Stacey, 1988). According to this perspective, setting members become dependent on researchers and are hurt when abandoned, and researchers, in turn, find themselves
able to escape the exigencies and problems plaguing everyday research settings. My research
experiences suggest that the end of research does, indeed, mark significant structural distinctions between researchers and setting members. The real risk, however, comes not through
abandonment, but through the reverse—when researchers and setting members attempt to
carry on close relationships after the end of fieldwork. This is the moment when they fight
against and resist the most pernicious and divisive forces. It is also when, as was true in my
case, they can be devastated by their efforts.
The nature of my research and my status as a graduate student allowed and even required
that I leave academia and cross over to another world for a short time. Researchers have
long been allowed to “research down,” without permanent damage to their identities and
reputations. Therefore, while engaging in research, my marriage to Lefty allowed me to
demonstrate my commitment to the tattoo community and feel better about my work. Marriage also forced Lefty to enter my world in ways that were very problematic for him. The
pain, anguish, and loneliness he experienced when trying to enter my world rivaled the culture
shock accounts of any ethnographer. He was chided, looked down upon, and marginalized
during many interactions within academia. My closest friends in graduate school, including
my advisor and her family, certainly fell in love, as I did, with Lefty and our friends, but
other professional colleagues kept a chilly distance.
One day I realized how awkward Lefty felt at my university. After walking down the
hallway to meet me in my office, Lefty arrived there rather frazzled and angry and noted that
as he passed by a group of my colleagues, they immediately stopped their conversation and
stared as he approached them. The talking did not resume until he was out of sight. When
Lefty explained his discomfort, I attempted to argue that he was being overly sensitive and that
my colleagues meant no harm. When he commented that he had “felt their hatred,” I stopped
arguing. Having traveled with Lefty and other heavily tattooed individuals extensively, I
had witnessed several incidents of silent hostility directed toward us but I would be hard
pressed to prove that this hostility existed. I just felt and knew it. The disdain was palpable
behind individuals’ hardened stares and whispers. In addition, I was told by one professor,
after bringing Lefty to an American Sociological Association conference in Chicago, that I
should not be seen with Lefty in professional circles. The gist of this comment, I assumed,
was that being seen with someone covered with many visible tattoos would make me look
unprofessional by association.
These initial encounters made Lefty very reluctant to spend any time around the university
or academia. This was easy to manage when I was in graduate school. At that time, my
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school work became the excuse for me to retreat into my husband’s world. Once the research
ended, Lefty and I took on academic institutions and gender expectations in a new way.
The ultimate struggle came when I completed my dissertation and attempted to find a job.
I applied for positions near our home for a few years and encountered no luck. Eventually,
I broadened my employment search and finally received an offer from the University of
Hawai’i, located thousands of miles from the Blue Mosque. Here, I had two difficult choices:
give up my aspirations of becoming a professor or move away and risk losing my marriage
and friendships.
After many discussions, compromises, and negotiations, Lefty and I attempted an equitable solution that we saw as “undoing” traditional gender inequalities between husband and
wife. We were to move to Hawai’i and return to the Blue Mosque during every academic
vacation. Therefore, the Blue Mosque would stay open, Lefty could tattoo for part of the
year, and I would retain my professorship. Unfortunately, from the outset, the move proved
to be exceptionally taxing for Lefty, as it uprooted him from his financial and social support
networks. Where he had enjoyed being the center of a deviant and colorful social circle at
the Blue Mosque, he found himself friendless and jobless in Hawai’i. Given the 15 to 4 ratio
of male to female professors in my department, faculty husbands were few and far between.
Although I was also friendless, this social isolation did not matter significantly to me
because, as a new assistant professor, I had more than enough work to keep me occupied. In
fact, I rarely had time in my new schedule to tackle many domestic tasks. Lefty, with nothing
but time, found himself adopting another role—househusband—and, although he initially
expressed delight in challenging traditional gender roles by being the supportive man behind
the career woman, eventually this dependent and isolating role grated on him. He became
increasingly agitated and depressed and frequently commented that he “was no longer the
man I married” and that he was “losing himself.” One day, as I was cleaning our bedroom, I
found the following poem Lefty had written on the plane to Hawai’i:
three thousand miles
I tell myself stories
higher and higher
the piles on piles
and three thousand miles
to get to the bottom
and come to the conclusion
smiles all smiles
and three thousand miles
such a small distance
to be with my lover
and feel like a child
again and again
over and over11
Two years into my assistant professorship, Lefty announced that he could not live in
Hawai’i. Our flirtation with riding the lines between our worlds had come to an end and we
were forced to choose between our careers and our relationship. Like many academic women
(see Landau, 1994), I confronted the difficult career/family dilemma.12 My intimate research
stance added additional complexities to this traditional dilemma and placed me amid and,
11 Lefty has granted written permission for me to publish this poem as part of this paper and has read this
paper several times.
12 In fact, as Dugger (2001, p. 132) found, the percentage of female faculty with tenure decreased from
24 percent to 20 percent between 1977 to 1995.
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ultimately, unable to fight multiple inequalities. If I left academia, I would be perpetuating
the unequal ratio of male to female faculty members, abandoning many female graduate
students who had few female mentors, and acting as a poor role model by demonstrating that
you have to give up your career to have a family. If I stayed in Hawai’i, on the other hand, I
would be turning my back not only on my husband but also on the very people whose lives,
intimacy, and experiences had helped to advance my career.
More important than all of my concerns, feelings, and experiences was the effect of our
choice on Lefty. Because he had first hand experience with the “househusband” role, Lefty
did not want me to give up my career and face the same childlike dependence. Having
been covered from neck to toe with tattoos for all of his adult life, Lefty was often secondguessed, questioned, and forced to prove himself as a very smart, talented, and responsible
professional to many individuals who saw heavily tattooed people as degenerates and social
misfits. Therefore, Lefty understood how important it was to me to advance professionally
in a world that often questions and devalues women. As a result, he did not want to collude
with dominant gender expectations by asking me to give up my career for a family. In fact,
he refused to let me make this choice. In many ways, I feel that Lefty made the ultimate
sacrifice for me. He chose to lose the marriage over asking me to leave my job. We filed for
a divorce during the second year of my assistant professorship.13
Despite the fact that I walked away from my marriage and fieldwork with considerably
more than I feel that I could ever give back to the community, Lefty remains far from bitter
about my study, this paper, or the end of our marriage. In fact, he has continued to support me
and our friendship unconditionally and, from thousands of miles away, I continue to support
and cherish him and our friends. When discussing the end of our relationship, we locate the
source of our problems in the difficult obstacles surrounding us, rather than in each other.
Discussion
In the process of researching my husband’s social world, I anticipated that ethical problems
would arise, and naively believed that I could mitigate them by following the advice from the
literature. These pieces of advice shaped many of my early emotions, behaviors, and choices
in the field. I worried about being an authentic friend, announcing my dedication to my
relationships over my research, disclosing my research plans and progress, and writing up my
findings in the most non-derogatory and inclusive way that I could. At the end of my marriage
and research, I realize that I had become obsessed with numerous micro-considerations
and had lost focus on the links between my data collection, relationships, research choices,
writing, and institutionalized inequalities. I had lost this vision primarily because the literature
had failed to discuss these distinctions meaningfully. This insight suggests that our ethical
guides and discussions regarding intimacy, immersion, and subjectivity in the field need
some refocusing.
What I should have focused on, and did not in the early days of research, was the way
that my data gathering, writing, and relationships colluded with, enacted, or resisted historic
13
The divorce dealt a significant blow to both of us. I could not write and could barely teach and Lefty
had difficultly tattooing for a year. This further highlights the lines dividing us. Tattooists are self-employed
service workers, therefore, being unable to work meant that Lefty earned very little that year and had
difficulty managing health insurance benefits, shop rent, and other out-of-pocket expenses associated with the
occupation. My university salary allowed me to recover from the divorce with significantly greater stability
and financial support.
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exploitative practices and relationships surrounding me and the community that I studied. I
certainly acknowledged the structural barriers between my study population and me, but this
was not enough. In essence, I should have seen myself and others as enacting structures in the
field. Furthermore, if the researchers’ ethical code is to avoid harming study members, then
I should have articulated very clearly how “doing structure” during research would affect
informants’ everyday lives.14 For example, by making Lefty’s world and profession the
center of my research, I was reinforcing traditional gender relationships between husbands
and wives. Lefty and our friends submitted beautifully to traditional relationships between
researchers and subjects by granting me unlimited access to their world, thoughts, feelings,
perspectives, and lives. Here, however, intimacy, commitment, and subjectivity were not
liberating. They greased the wheels of traditional gender and research relationships. It is not
that I was being manipulative or inauthentic in my relationships, it was that intimacy was
the vehicle through which we all reinforced larger structural relationships.
When the research ended and my professional status changed, however, is when we
resisted, rather than reinforced, larger inequalities. Through our committed relationship,
Lefty and I attempted to create a permanent space between the conventional academic world
and the deviant tattoo subculture. Numerous barriers prohibited this. Historically, academics
are allowed brief forays into other cultures (see Stoller, 2005), but they are not permitted
permanent membership without career-threatening consequences. Researchers are not only
barred from permanently living in the other’s world, but they are also prohibited from
bringing the other back with them from the field15 (see Blackwood, 1995; Gearing, 1995).
Lefty and I were regularly reminded that he did not belong in my world through disapproving
comments and stares from my colleagues. Couple this treatment with the isolating experience
of being removed from a supportive deviant subculture, and the effect was grueling for Lefty.
In addition, larger gender systems surrounding academia, as well as many other professions,
made the role of househusband an awkward stance for any man—heavily tattooed, or not.
These historic expectations, practices, and relationships closed the doors between our worlds
in ways that went beyond what I did and how I acted in the field. Whether I loved or hated
him, was intimate or distant, had sex in the field or remained celibate, committed my life
to the tattoo community or used it only for career-building data, Lefty, or any outsider,
will always have difficulty crossing over into legitimate domains. When marginalized men
attempt to ride into middleclass worlds on women’s coattails, the passage becomes even
more attenuated. The structures ensure it.
14 Such a focus would have significantly altered my project. When Lefty and I discussed the advantages and
disadvantages of the research, we should have focused our attention on the structural barriers between us and
we could have discussed, with more clarity, how these would play out differently for us. Lefty, who initially
imagined that his profession might gain greater legitimacy through the research, could have more clearly
imagined how being married to a researcher might change his everyday life (i.e., having to circulate in my
academic world and negotiating the job market with me). I might have predicted that I would have to choose
between professional advancement or personal and professional commitment to study participants. Although,
in the end, we might have made the same decisions, our choices would have been more informed.
15 My thanks to Carol Joffe for noting that the central problem was not marriage, but the class differences
between Lefty and me. Although Lefty was born and raised in a similar middle-class background to mine, his
status as a heavily tattooed man meant that he had difficulty circulating freely in middle-class society. I have
known several female researchers who married members of the field and who encountered few of the problems
facing Lefty and me. The difference is that they were researching up or across, instead of down. Gearing
(1995), a white woman who married a Vincentian man, also divorced, although she did not elaborate on the
reasons why. Blackwood (1995), on the other hand, explicitly noted the reason why she could not bring her
lover back to live with her. Because the U.S. does not legally recognize same-sex partnerships, Blackwood’s
lover could not gain a visa to enter the U.S. from Indonesia.
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The idea that we “do structure” in the field sheds light on the ongoing ethical debates
regarding subjectivity, immersion, and writing in qualitative research. One of the primary
discoveries from my experiences is that subjectivity is not more or less exploitative than
objectivity. For example, several researchers, primarily working in the feminist paradigm,
have warned that there is a distinction between “true” friendship and the friendliness that
researchers offer (Acker et al., 1996; Cotterill, 1992; Finch, 1984; Gorelick, 1991; Kirsch,
1999; Patai, 1991; Stacey, 1988). Furthermore, researchers’ friendliness is interpreted as manipulative because it masks objective data-gathering goals, rather than establishing genuine
bonds. On this subject, Reinharz (1993, p. 72) noted that special bonds between researchers
and research participants are an excessive demand to place on feminist researchers.
My experiences push Reinharz’s critique a bit further by noting that genuine and longlasting bonds are not only an excessive demand, but are also not the source of the exploitation.
If researchers and research participants enact inequalities when they are intimate, intimacy
can be even more damaging and problematic than objectivity. If there is any distinction
between real and false intimacy, my relationship with my key informant and other study
members was as true, real, and genuine as any in my life. Being genuine, committed, and
forging special bonds were not the problem. The problem was the structures between my
study population and me. In the end, the bonds we formed were not strong enough to
overcome multiple inequalities. At times, also, these emotional bonds reinforced traditional
gender relationships. Had I been a distant, objective observer abandoning the field as soon as
it stopped yielding new data, Lefty might have been spared the devastation of culture shock,
divorce, and the emotional obligation of assisting my work. It is important to insert a key
warning about subjectivity here. It seems that the pleasures and dangers of the field can leave
informants, as well as researchers, bruised and aching from their close encounters.
My research also sheds light on the politics of immersion in the field. For example,
proponents of carnal (Wacquant, 2004) and experiential (Ferrell & Hamm, 1998b) sociology
have suggested that partaking both physically and emotionally in the action of settings renders
more vivid, visceral, and “better” images of the lived realities of social life. This stance leads
to several ethical questions. If we cannot truly understand or faithfully describe the lived
realities of a setting unless we become experientially involved, where does this put researchers
who study the prostitution of underage girls (Inciardi, 1993), men who practice and boast
of gang rape (Bourgois, 1995), or informants who use, produce, or traffic illegal drugs
(Adler, 1993; Tunnell, 1998)? Can we not truly understand these worlds unless we engage
in every behavior with setting members? Certainly, by having sex with informants, Goode
(1999, 2002) has led some to begin drawing lines between valid experiential immersion and
gratuitous thrill-seeking.
My research experiences suggest that we should avoid arguing that any behavior in the field
is inherently unethical or ethical. To pick apart which behaviors are defensible expressions
of immersion and which are unethical, would be to extend our obsession with the micropolitics of research. Researchers would do well to avoid debating whether it is wrong to
have casual sex with informants, to witness an underage girl exchanging sex for crack, to
listen silently as informants share gang-rape stories, or to engage in any other activities in
the field. The most important tool to avoid harm and exploitation is to locate the structural
context surrounding our research. This means we need to do more than acknowledge differing
structural locations that we and study members occupy, and note how we enact inequalities
when we have sex with informants (Goode, 1999, 2002), watch sex-for-crack exchanges
(Inciardi, 1993), or listen to gang-rape stories (Bourgois, 1995). We should also ask, how
did having casual sex in the field change the lives of researchers’ sex partners and other
community members? What became of the girl who exchanged sex for crack in the crack
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house? What happened, not only to gang-rape perpetrators in El Barrio, but to their victims?
How were their lives affected during the course of and because of the research? Being able
to answer these questions comprises the difference between gratuitous investigation and
immersion.16
This insight also speaks to questions about discourse and representation. According to the
postmodern perspective, some writing forms and topics (especially disclosing taboo subjects)
can challenge dominant knowledge production systems. Characterizing this stance, Behar
(1995, p. 4) has noted that some forms of writing can “decolonize the power relations inherent
in the representation of the Other.” I want to argue that non-traditional writing styles and
topics are not always and everywhere liberating or exploitative. We also “do structure” when
we write. Just as subjective field relationships can reinforce gender and other inequalities,
experimental texts and taboo topics can also support and perpetuate larger practices that
perpetuate historic inequalities. We should ask how we enact, resist, or cope with structures
when we write. Also, we should note how our writing changes setting members’ lives.17
In summary, I have argued that we have gone terribly off track in our ethical evaluation of
intimate field relationships. The focus of our attention should not be on such micro-concerns
as how to ethically engage in sex, love, or friendship with informants, what constitutes ethical
immersion and what constitutes thrill seeking, how much or how little of our emotions and
relationships we should disclose, or how and in what style we should write about the other.
In the perspective advanced here, there is no inherent ethical advantage of subjectivity over
objectivity, friendship over friendliness, intimacy over distance, celibacy over sex, crime over
legality, disclosure over silence, or experimental writing over traditional discourse. We should
locate how our relationships (intimate or distant), behaviors (norm-breaking or conventional),
emotions (love or hate), writing (traditional or non-traditional), and other research choices are
constrained by, work against, or reinforce social structures. In essence, we should look at all
of our research activities as “doing structure.” This also means focusing most of our attention
on the effects of this resistance or enactment on our research population—not on ourselves.
This should be, and sadly has not been, the compass guiding our choices and behaviors.
Acknowledgements I would like to extend a very special thanks to Patricia Adler, Peter Adler, Joanne
Belknap, Paul Colomy, and Lance Talon for supporting me and commenting upon several drafts of this paper.
I am also indebted to Qualitative Sociology‘s editorial board and anonymous reviewers for their insightful
suggestions and encouragement.
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Springer
You Got It, So When
Do You Flaunt It?
Building Rapport, Intersectionality,
and the Strategic Deployment
of Gender in the Field
Journal of Contemporary
Ethnography
Volume 38 Number 3
June 2009 358-383
© 2009 Sage Publications
10.1177/0891241608330456
http://jce.sagepub.com
hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com
Julie Mazzei
Kent State University, Ohio
Erin E. O’Brien
University of Massachusetts Boston
Building on existing literature and disparate field experiences, this article
forwards a thesis that status group memberships such as gender are not
destiny for building access and rapport during fieldwork. Rather, the female
researcher is an active participant in how she is perceived and received by
informants, capable of negotiating socially constructed scripts that dominate
the field setting to her analytic advantage. Analysis demonstrates how field
settings deem various combinations of a researcher’s attributes relevant and
how researchers can strategically utilize established scripts regarding these
status group memberships to ethically gain the trust of informants. Our
comparative case study design uses the concept of “deploying gender” to
build this more general, intersectional thesis on the role of a researcher’s
status group memberships for gaining rapport.
Keywords: fieldwork; gender; intersectionality; access; rapport; identity
T
wo of the most fundamental components of conducting successful
field work are gaining access to the field and establishing rapport with
individuals and groups who have the potential to serve as informants (Coy
2001; Lofland and Lofland 1995; Jorgensen 1989; Adler and Adler 1987).
Instructional literature on field work is replete with the importance of
successful entry to the field, and with discussions of potential challenges to
Authors’ Note: The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers whose feedback
improved this article, and Dr. Pat McCoy whose review of an earlier version of this project
provided valuable insights. The authors are listed alphabetically.
358
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Mazzei, O’Brien / You Got It, So When Do You Flaunt It? 359
entry. Central to considerations of how to gain access and rapport are the
potential effects of shared or contrasting status group memberships between
field researchers and informants (McKeganey and Bloor 1991; Liebow
1993, vii-xxi, 1967, 232-256; Wax 1979; Bell, Caplan, and Karim 1993).
The analysis that follows contributes to the expanding literature on this
question—particularly that which treats gaining access and establishing
rapport as a set of interactive processes between a female researcher and the
norms defined by her field setting (Lofland and Lofland 1995; Shenton and
Hayter 2004).
Feminist scholars have been particularly prominent and insightful regarding the ways in which status group membership can challenge or facilitate
entry (DeVault 1999; Wolf 1996; Strassert and Kronsteiner 1993; Lofland
1971; Gurney 1985; Warren and Rasmussen 1977; Warren 2003). Some
findings suggest that the alignment or misalignment of one’s gender with
informants has fairly deterministic effects for gaining access and rapport—
effects largely outside of a researcher’s control (Lofland 1971; Adams
1999). A more active positioning of the researcher, however, has paralleled
the rise of constructivist understanding of identity (Macintyre 1991; Warren
et al. 2000). This scholarship recognizes that what it means to be a woman,
as in the gendered, social role rather than the physical being, differs by social
context and this has consequence for entering the field and establishing rapport (see for example West and Zimmerman 1987; Turnovsky 2004;
Kobayashi 1994). Researchers subsequently have the capacity to actively
adopt, reject, or (sometimes) slightly renegotiate the roles deemed appropriate for their respective gender while in the field (Warren and Rasmussen
1977; Warren et al. 2000, 5; Adams 1999, 340; Lofland and Lofland 1995).
They can consciously play a gender role. Intersectionality is increasingly
addressed in these accounts and the emerging consensus is that gender
alignment or misalignment with informants is not destiny for access and
rapport—field researchers can establish agency via the culmination of their
group memberships (see for example Panini 1991, 6).
Our analysis expands on this active positioning of the field researcher.
Drawing on two different field experiences, we adopt a more overtly intersectional approach to understanding how gender influences access and
rapport in the field. We argue that establishing rapport does not necessarily
require that a female researcher choose among adopting, rejecting, or
slightly tweaking a gender role determined by her field setting. Rather, our
thesis is that gaining access and establishing rapport are often dependent on
a researcher’s ability to first recognize and then strategically work within
the socially constructed meanings that define all her physical and social
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360 Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
characteristics deemed relevant by her particular field setting. We suggest
that the field setting determines which of a researcher’s “key attributes” are
most important and that socially constructed meanings, “scripts,” are
attached to these and other attributes—be they gender, race, national origin,
or other group cleavages. These scripts contain messages about what individuals in particular groups—female, Latina, white, black-female, American,
male, gay white male, etcetera—are “typically like,” and therefore what is
expected of them (Ansell 2001, 105-106). While not all actors in the field
environment necessarily accept these scripts, they are readily available to
informants and, usually, the perceptive field researcher. Understanding these
established scripts allows a female researcher to regularly negotiate her
own gender and other field-relevant status group memberships in a strategic
fashion, and can thereby provide useful and ethical ways to build access
and rapport. In so doing, we overtly highlight what much of the scholarship
on gender and ethnography has only latently recognized: scripts regarding
the array of a researcher’s status group memberships provide opportunities
for the researcher to deploy gender to gain entry and establish rapport. This
process is regularly reconstituted in the field depending on the particular
situation and informant(s). So while we agree researchers often “play” or
“negotiate” a gender role, we see this performance as not necessarily static
nor determined, and intersectionally derived.
To build this thesis, we first return in more detail to the existing literature
on the role researcher’s status group memberships play for gaining entry to
the field. The review demonstrates how threads of our thesis appear in the
existing literature as well as how we weave these threads into a coherent
whole that advances the scholarship. From there, we introduce the two
distinct field experiences that we drew on to build our thesis. We then delve
into the empirical muscle of the study, delineating how the reading and
strategic deployment of gender scripts can facilitate access and rapport in
both the presence and absence of shared statuses between researcher and
informant(s). We conclude with a proviso regarding safety and ethics.
Weaving Threads: Takes on Identity,
Access, and Rapport Thus Far
The alignment between a field researcher’s attributes and those of her
potential informants has long been recognized as relevant to the collection
of valid data in the field (Lofland 1971; Adams 1999). For example, most
initial work on gender and fieldwork posited access and rapport as more
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Mazzei, O’Brien / You Got It, So When Do You Flaunt It? 361
challenging for women because of assumed limitations gender norms
impose. An embedded assumption was often that the field researcher seeks
to examine arenas of male dominance and/or patriarchal cultures. In this
realm, “while stereotypical attitudes towards females generally assure their
acceptance in the naïve incompetent role in a male-dominated setting
(Lofland 1971), those same attitudes hamper females’ efforts to make the
transition to the professional role” (Gurney 1985, 42). Male field researchers
make similar observations noting how gendered norms and expectations
impede cross-gender field relationships (McKeganey and Bloor 1991).
The focus on gender congruence or noncongruence later transitioned to
a more multiplicative, or intersectional, notion of identity (Ansell 2001,
105-6; Shahidiani 2001, 73; Kobayashi 1994, 77, 78; England 1994, 84;
Hunt 1984). This transition has not, however, seen a wholesale abandonment of the view that how a researcher’s status group memberships align
with her informants’ is a determinate force on access and rapport. There is
more debate as to whether congruence impedes or assists, but a close reading reveals that a researcher’s group memberships are still, to a great extent,
treated as destiny. Some indicate that noncongruence on key attributes
undermines access and rapport. Conducting research in a rural area of India
not far from her own home, Elizabeth Chacko, for example, found that her
“positionality” was defined not only by her gender, education, and class,
but also by her dialect. She points out though that “linguistic capability
does not translate into cultural fluency,” (Chacko 2004, 54) and highlights
how her own noncongruence along particular attributes deemed relevant by
the field (dialect) adversely affected her entry and data collection.
Others who also theorize from the intersectionality perspective, however,
suggest that noncongruence on key attributes facilitates access and rapport
(Gurney 1985, 47). Ann Chi Lin, for example, experienced few salient demographic similarities as an Asian American female doing research in male
prisons. She writes that “the scarcity of people like me [in the field setting]
was in one sense very helpful, because it meant that apart from being
surprised I didn’t have an accent, neither [prison] staff nor prisoners had any
reference point about for my own racial allegiances” (Lin 2000, 190). In
evaluating her role as a female in a male-dominated institution, Lin suspects
that she likely gathered different but equally valid data as compared with
what male researchers might have collected. Being female countered the
machismo culture of prisons, helping elicit data on how prisoners think about
family. Noncongruence on key demographic attributes facilitated rapport.
Thus the literature has evolved to address how, even in situations of
noncongruence, researchers can successfully gain entry. Such work has
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362 Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
generally argued that researchers can assume roles assigned by the field, or
adopt scripts provided by the field and through this mitigate whatever
challenges gender (or other attributes) might pose. Even within this evolution, however, conforming to gendered expectations was generally treated
as the only real option for researchers, as to do otherwise could jeopardize
the validity of one’s study by altering the field site (Gurney 1985; see
Adams 1999, 332).
In a seminal piece titled “Sex and Gender in Field Research” (1977),
Carol Warren and Paul Rasmussen compare the sex roles assumed by each
in a variety of field settings to gain access to some otherwise rather exclusive cultures. Warren describes how adopting the field-assigned role of the
“incompetent female” or, rather accepting the assumption of being an
incompetent female by those in the field, allowed her access to information
in the court system and even prohibited areas in a drug rehabilitation center,
simply because her study participants assumed she would not understand
what she observed (361-363). Similarly, “Rasmussen used the ‘cute young
datable guy’ approach” (364) to establish rapport with females in a professional organizational setting, and assumed the persona of a single gay man
while studying massage parlors to alleviate suspicions of him and establish
rapport with those in the field (354).
Researchers of both genders have thus donned gendered roles to conduct
field work with as little interruption of, or effect on, the field itself as possible.
Much like selecting attire, these researchers select gendered language and
behaviors acceptable to those in the field to build rapport in ways that do not
threaten potential informants. Female researchers in particular have made
note of how assuming the air of the “naïve woman,” “fag hag,” or “dancing
daughter,” while perhaps somewhat painful for the researcher, allowed access
to information that might otherwise have been denied (see Warren et al. 2000,
Warren 2001). Doing so allowed researchers to simultaneously appropriate
the gendered scripts dominant in the field and do so in a way that circumvented the way in which gender congruence or noncongruence could have
undermined access and rapport. Their ability to overcome or work with social
scripts is perhaps attributable to the dual role of the researcher as an “insider”
hoping to be recognized as a member and as an inevitable “outsider” as a
researcher (see, for example, Panini 1991). Yet the reliance on compliance
has inevitable tradeoffs. It follows that certain kinds of access and rapport
are impossibilities when field researchers’ roles are limited by the norms
surrounding their particular status group memberships.
Two points relevant for our analysis emerge from this scholarship. First,
inherent in the intersectional view of field researchers is an understanding
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Mazzei, O’Brien / You Got It, So When Do You Flaunt It? 363
that field sites differentially determine which of the field researcher attributes
matter most. The concept of intersectionality recognizes that researchers
simultaneously overlap and diverge demographically from informants,
focusing on the effect of “key attributes” for access and rapport. These “key
attributes” are determined by the field setting and our analysis builds on this
recognition. We retain this view suggesting informants and the cultural
norms of a particular field site determine which mix of a field researcher’s
group memberships is most immediately relevant. The meanings attached
to these key attributes also differ by field setting. In this manner, field
settings socially construct the researcher’s identity.
The second relevant point that emerges from the literature is the one
from which our analysis diverges. Unwittingly or not, these pieces leave the
impression that status group memberships have independent effects on
access and rapport that are largely out of the researcher’s control; the
researcher’s agency is limited to role adoption or rejection. We disagree
with this view. Rather, we see the field researcher as decidedly more active
in determining how alignment between her field-relevant status group
memberships and informants’ influence access and rapport. Our view is that
this is an interactive, negotiative process whereby ethical researchers can
read which of their attributes matter in a particular field setting (and field
interaction), come to understand the scripts operating about these attributes,
and then, usually strategically negotiate their gender and/or host of identities to build access and rapport. Ethical researchers do not challenge the
overall scripts operating in the culture, then. Rather, they adopt, strategically
deploy, and challenge the applicability of these scripts to them by marshaling
their intersectional self in light of what the field setting has determined
particular attributes mean.
The thesis we build sees “actively negotiating identity” as much more than
a field researcher reading a gender script and then basically choosing whether
to play this role. In the examples above, active role-taking is primarily a
…