Fieldwork, Participation and Practice

Ethics and Dilemmas in Qualitative Research

Marlene de Laine

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2000
• Print ISBN: 9780761954873, 9780761954866
• eBook ISBN: 9781446228173
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

?I would highly recommend Fieldwork, Participation and Practice: Ethics and Dilemmas in Qualitative Research as a text for the wide range of fields that currently engage in fieldwork. She does an excellent job of moving beyond basic ethical principles and informs the reader of the complexity of contemporary fieldwork? - Forum for Qualitative Social Research - follow the link below to read the complete review

This timely and topical look at the role of ethics in fieldwork takes into account some of the major issues confronting qualitative researchers. The main purposes of this book are twofold: to promote an understanding of the harmful possibilities of fieldwork; and to provide ways of dealing with ethical problems and dilemmas. To these ends, examples of actual fieldwork are provided that address ethical problems and dilemmas, and posit ways of dealing with them.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

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Now that the richness and power of ethnography and other kinds of qualitative research are confirmed in social science, practitioners work through the complications of fieldwork looking for less harmful possibilities for making sense of people’s lives. The free exploration of intriguing ideas was tempered in anthropology over the last half of the twentieth century by the importance given to other values, including human rights. The individual has the right to determine for him or herself what others might do with their ideas and attitudes. A great deal of soul searching has taken place; terms like deception and informed consent have emerged to inform of a concern by anthropologists and sociologists for the rights of the individual and those studied.

The emergence of new forms of social research, especially critical participatory and applied research, has meant fieldworkers must make their research goals explicit and seek permission from and respect the privacy of the people (Barrett, 1996). Knowledge for its own sake was no longer acceptable among some segments of the academic audience, who argue for a critical perspective on social life. The issues emerging in qualitative research in contemporary times importantly include what we consider constitutes ethics, and an explication and extension of traditional ethical models to deal with the new activism (Lincoln, 1995).

With the ‘crisis of representation’ the emphasis has largely been concentrated on textual matters but there are a number of fieldworkers who would prefer to see more attention paid to grass-roots level actual fieldwork practice (Fabian, 1991). The conditions of fieldwork (paradoxes, ambiguities and dilemmas) that require researchers engage in face-to-face contact with subjects, rather than assume an impersonal detached approach of positivism and quantitative research, are considered inherently problematic. The production of knowledge puts fieldworkers in close contact with subjects and this closeness creates problems with the management of anonymity and confidentiality (Lincoln, 1995). Ethical problems and dilemmas are a necessary part of fieldwork. They cannot be adequately anticipated and usually emerge ex post factum (Fabian, 1991).

In contemporary fieldwork the trend is for more participation and less observation. Detachment of the subject from the researcher and the research is rejected. The gap between researcher and subject has to be closed and there is to be communion with methods, analysis, interpretation and ‘writing-it-up’, and with social relationships. The new ‘activism’ calls for social relationships that are intimate and close and requires researchers to demonstrate more authenticity, sensitivity, maturity and integrity than in previous moments of social science (Lincoln, 1995).

Fieldwork becomes especially problematic when researchers cross boundaries of conventional and sensitive topics, public and private space, overt and covert methods, field notes to texts, and overlap roles and relationships. Multiple roles and relationships in the field are a feature of some feminist participatory and activist approaches. The researcher who demonstrates empathy and care and engages on an emotional level with subjects can enter the ground of the therapist, but without the same training and back-up support in sociology and anthropology needed for debriefing or counselling services and sessions. Overlapping or multiple roles and relationships present researchers with a range of complex and unavoidable ethical and practical dilemmas.

Friendships that facilitate access to confidences and physical regions that are private and secret can make problematic disclosure and publication of personal information. Research goals can become complicated when ethical and professional obligations to disclose and publish clash with moral and personal obligations to subjects to ensure secrets be kept private, confidentiality maintained and trust not betrayed. When various parties with different interests and expectations clash there can arise an ethical and practical dilemma for which there is no satisfactory solution, but only a compromising experience that must be lived through and lived with.

The ‘ethics of relationships’ that is established in the field between the researcher and subject carries over into the text. The author must accord the subject the same respect in print as would be conveyed in the face-to-face situation; one must not say in print what would not be said to someone’s face (Hornstein, 1996). Professional and research standards of a discipline do not favour concealing information and ‘gatekeepers’ may exert a powerful moral pressure on the researcher to meet their demands of disclosure. Managing the conflicting expectations of gatekeepers, sponsors and subjects can put pressure on the researcher to conform, but one party (usually the subject) may be compromised, along with the researcher.

Ethical dilemmas

Ethical and moral dilemmas are an unavoidable consequence, or an occupational hazard of fieldwork. Dilemmas and ambivalences do not always reveal themselves clearly and are virtually impossible to plan for in advance (Punch, 1986: 33). An ethical dilemma arises when the researcher experiences conflict, especially conflict that cannot clearly be addressed by one’s own moral principles, or the establishment of ethical codes (Hill, Glaser and Harden, 1995).

An ethical dilemma may be described as a problem for which no course of action seems satisfactory; it exists because there are ‘good’ but contradictory ethical reasons to take conflicting and incompatible courses of action. Ethical dilemmas are situations in which there is no ‘right’ decision, ‘only a decision that is thoughtfully made and perhaps “more right” than the alternatives’ (Hill, Glaser and Harden, 1995: 19).

When confronted with an ethical dilemma, the researcher needs more than a code of ethics for guidance (Hill, Glaser and Harden, 1995). The researcher needs some understanding of how to use the code together with other resources to make a decision that is more ‘right’. The individual’s intentions, motivations and ways of cognitively structuring the ethically sensitive situation are equally important to ethical and moral practice as are conforming to or violating an ethical code. Ethical decision making includes being consciously aware of one’s values, principles and allegiance to ethical codes, intuition and feelings, within a context that is characterized by professional and power relationships.

Sieber suggests a number of ways in which ethical dilemmas may arise in research on human behaviour and social life (Sieber, 1996: 15–16). Students may be attuned to ethical issues in research but still find themselves enmeshed in dilemmas because they had not foreseen how research may impact on the participant’s privacy, or adequately anticipated the risk of harm arising from research for participants and for the self. On the other hand, an ethical problem may be foreseen but there may be no apparent way to avoid the problem (Sieber, 1996). The researcher may ‘assume’ disclosure of information will cause participants to consider they have been ‘wronged’ and this may lead to attempts to reduce harm through partial self-censorship (Lee, 1993). The researcher may foresee a problem but be unsure of what to do because the consequences of subsequent action are unclear (Sieber, 1996). The student’s current moral outlook may simply be inadequate to the task of envisaging ethical implications arising from use of non-verbal communication.

The literature about the ethical decision-making process describes ethical codes in various forms, notably absolutist and relativistic, and the general moral principles underlying codes (do not betray confidence and trust; do no ‘harm’ to others). From the perspective of ethical codes and guidelines, dilemmas are almost exclusively looked at objectively and from an intellectual distance (Hill, Glaser and Harden, 1995: 23). In actual fieldwork, researchers experience ethical dilemmas with an immediacy and personal involvement that draws on intuition and empathy, feelings and emotion. These dimensions cannot be separated out from decision making in a complex power structure. In a feminist approach, one’s personal experience and involvement are ‘legitimate’ and necessary factors to take into account when making ethical decisions.

Situational and contextual elements cannot be adequately handled by drawing on ethical codes because other elements (moral values, ideals, personal and professional standards, empathy or intuition), a necessary aspect of feminist analysis, are missing. Ethical codes are general and absolute. They are intellectualized, objective contructions that make no allowance for cultural, social, personal and emotional variations. The personalized relationships that are currently recommended in some segments of the academic audience underpin one of the emerging issues for discussion in qualitative research today: the extension and reconfiguration of what researchers consider ethics in research is about (Lincoln, 1995). The tradition in ethics committees has been to see ethics in terms of what we do to subjects, rather than the wider moral and social responsibilities of simply being a researcher (Kellehear, 1993: 14). The traditional impersonal and objective ethical model assumed the separation of researcher and researched, but the new fieldwork being practised suggests less distance or detachment between researchers and researched; and a new ethic or moral imperative that is not yet codified.

Ethical dilemmas that admit of no comfortable outcome but must be lived are experiences that researchers need to know about. The researcher without a satisfactory solution to an ethical problem may have to reconcile the self to compromise. Contingencies or controversies of fieldwork, however, need not be seen only as obstructions to data collection; they can be experienced as opportunities for celebration since they force self-awareness and give promise of change. A moment in fieldwork may be created to implement a more ‘open’ attitude toward what subjects expect of the researcher and how they experience the fieldworker. This could contribute to the establishment of fieldwork that is more moral (Liberman, 1999).

The aims of this text are:

1. To promote an understanding of the harmful possibilities of fieldwork.
2. To foster ways to deal with ethical and practical dilemmas.

In each of the chapters, attempts are made to describe the pitfalls and dangers likely to confront the fieldworker; to provide examples of ethical and moral dilemmas, how they were created and how the fieldworker solved or lived with the problem; and what, if anything, could have been done to avoid them.

In Chapter 2 consideration is given to the issue of moral choice. Students are advised to adopt a new form of research that is more moral and less morally objectionable (Schwandt, 1995). The concept ‘moral career’ provides a useful conceptual frame for investigating the moral dimensions of the interpretivist inquirer, especially her or his conceptualization of their fieldwork practice and conceptualization of self (Schwandt, 1995). The term ‘career’ has usually been reserved for those who expect to enjoy pathways leading to a rise in status within respectable professions. Goffman (1961a) used the concept to trace the moral aspects of mental patients, whose passageway through the institution involved the internalization of a fair amount of moral transformation. The concept moral career facilitates a dual focus and makes possible a stereoscopic look at internal matters (felt-identity), and external public matters of official position in society (self-image) (1961a).

In Chapter 2 Schwandt’s (1995) hypothesis is explained. He offers no comprehensive examination of the moral career of the interpretive enquirer, only a few observations about one specific passage in fieldwork that allows for two ways of problem solving. Fieldwork requires the inquirer confront controversies; these controversies constitute a moral passage, defined as wrestling with ‘problems of self-identity and relationship’ (Schwandt, 1995: 133). Controversies, as problems of identity and researcher–respondent relationships in actual fieldwork, for a truly moral outcome, require ‘organization of the connections between self, other and world, and reflection on what is right to do and good to be as a social inquirer’ (Schwandt, 1995: 134). Fieldwork problems demand the union of intellect and passion to constitute a moral passage, an emphasis only on the intellectualizing aspect of research means something of the human quality is missing.

Ditton’s (1977a) work is drawn on to show how the conceptual tool ‘moral career’ has been used in social science to identify different contingent moral steps or decisions that facilitate a fair degree of moral transformation. The example focuses on salesmen at a bakery who are inducted and acclimatized to normative practices for the situation, and how they attempt to neutralize moral consequences to ensure they do not contaminate the production of a total social ‘me’ (to use interactionist terminology). The normative experience for salesmen is assumed as Ditton’s lived experience, since participant-observation was carried out in the bakery. Engaging with ‘situational honesty’ may not be that uncommon for fieldworkers, burdened by ‘guilty knowledge’ that could adversely impact on self-image and felt-identity.

The practical side of the ethical problem is made understandable by a focus on a variety of neutralization techniques that provide a sociological perspective on co-workers processes of adjustment to activities that affect identity (Ditton, 1974). There is a need to ensure that the subsidiary and minor deviant role assumed by salesmen does not assume a controlling and master status and contaminate the production of a total social ‘me’. To this end a variety of excuses and justifications are employed, an overview of which is provided in this chapter.

The traditional ethical model, in both perspectives (absolutist and relativist), is examined and compared with an alternative ethical model proposed by Denzin (1997). He calls the ‘postpragmatic’ or postmodern alternative to the ‘traditional impersonal positivist ethical model’, into which students have been socialized during undergraduate years and against which postgraduates continue to justify fieldwork, characterized by looking at, rather than being with the other, the ‘feminist communitarian ethical model’. Other ethical issues to be considered in Chapter 2 include covert research and the issue of ‘passing’ (concealing discrediting information that could damage identity).

Chapter 3 features the issue of access, mainly in terms of access to a conceptual framework for staging appearances and performances; but access is also looked at in relation to entry into back regions of social establishments as well as back regions of the mind. In fieldwork, uncovering the member’s intersubjectivity is central to one’s capacity to portray emotional and motivational attunement to a group’s moral order and to perform activities appropriate for an audience the fieldworker confronts. Access to ‘insider’ information is crucial to ‘impression management’ and precedes the major research task, that of data collection. Staging the self appropriately, with appearance and performances, is shown importantly to require access to codes, ‘recipes’ or scripts (terminology depending on methodological or philosophical perspectives).

Access to ‘experts’ in the field, who assume the role of trainer and facilitate the researcher’s socialization to a subculture, and observation of degradation ceremonies, that bring together previously implied scattered pieces of information, are shown to facilitate access to a moral order and provide a shared understanding of appropriate acts for staging subsequent appearances and performances. ‘Status degradation ceremonies’ relate to any communicative work that results in the transformation of another’s identity to that of subordinate figure (Garfinkel, 1956: 420). Status degradation ceremonies usually feature a number of witnesses who share a common definition of the situation of a rule breaker, and who are sufficiently inspired to moral indignation to promote public denunciation. Such denunciation ceremonies or confrontations between a marginal person and agents of control serve to communicate the values and norms of the social group. They can illuminate the source of ethical and moral dilemmas that confront the researcher and co-workers in a specific socio-political situation.

The concept ‘moral community’ is explored to highlight the ambiguous and anomalous situation that can be the context in which the researcher is lodged, and required to perform activities in an appropriate way, in advance of knowing what ‘appropriate’ means in social, motivational and emotional ways for that situation; projecting a definition of the situation for ‘normals’ is made questionable. In situations where rules and roles are not clearly formed or are ambiguous, the stage is set for making mistakes. Time is needed to learn the script. One not able to recognize and generate acceptable behaviour display for the situation may risk being caught ‘out of face’ or in ‘wrong face’, and is confronted with the task of having to ‘save face’. A critique of Goffman’s earlier work (1959, 1967) is included in this chapter, since Goffman assumed performing roles would be unproblematic for ‘normals’; his earlier work is critiqued on such grounds in this chapter. During the preliminary phase of fieldwork, when the researcher is learning implicit roles and rules, the cues to correct for discrepancies may be inadvertently ignored. This may evoke the antagonism of others towards her or him and cause the researcher to experience personal stress.

Informed consent is considered in terms of access to multiple roles and relationships. From a dramaturgical perspective, the manipulation that is implied in human social life is carried over into research practice with the suggestion of a continuum where research is more or less overt. This type of argument raises the issue ‘when is manipulation not considered ethical?’ (Hunt and Benford, 1997). The concept ‘passing’ once again captures matters of ‘impression management’, with management of undisclosed discrediting information about ‘the self’, when the actor is in the damage-control mode (Goffman, 1963: 58).

The dramaturgical approach to social phenomena acknowledges that the staging of the self or ‘impression management’ is problematic. With dramaturgy, life proceeds like a drama, with each person as actor, director, audience and critic of herself and her relations to others, who are seen as having the same qualities (Lyman and Scott, 1975: 107). Concepts borrowed from the theatre (actors, roles, scripts, performances and audiences) are terms used in this and other chapters, in relation to techniques used and the principal problems with impression management in the field and in the text. Appearance is shown to set the scene for social interaction and reference is made to the work of Stone, who claims ‘through appearance identities are placed, values appraised, moods appreciated, and attitudes anticipated’ (Stone, 1962: 101).

Chapter 4 directs a foc...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The moral career of the qualitative fieldworker
• 3 Scripts and staging the self
• 4 Back regions and sensitive methods
• 5 Roles and role performance
• 6 Ethical dilemmas: the demands and expectations of various audiences
• 7 Field notes: ethics and the emotional self
• 8 Textual ‘impression management’ of self and others
• 9 Conclusion
• References
• Index