Fieldwork in Familiar Places challenges the misconceptions about morality, culture, and objectivity that support these skepticisms, to show that we can take ...

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.

Researching two different work settings, police work and hospice care, the authors experienced a strange sense of discomfort in their bodies during their fieldwork when investigating professional training and work situations, especially in encounters with citizens and patients. In some of those situations, the authors withdrew physically or mentally from the situation without wanting to do so, feeling emotionally affected by the uncertainty of the situations, not fully grasping the meaning of what was going on. In a strange way (...) they felt awkwardly detached from their research activities and their bodily involvement in their fieldwork. In this article, the authors seek to explore the meaning of awkwardness embedded in some kinds of ethical dilemma. Through a phenomenological analysis based on the concept of intentionality of the body and a model of inner dilemmas, they reach a renewed understanding on the phenomenon of awkwardness as a natural way for researchers to respond to challenging fieldwork situations. Finally, they propose and unfold mutual interviewing and cooperative analysis as methods of investigating researcher's subjectivity in facing such situations. (shrink)

Jeanette Edwards observes a pattern of questions of the form “Why do anthropology fieldwork in location X?” - she only hears the question posed of some places - and she explains this pattern by saying that some places are taken to be obviously legitimate for anthropology fieldwork whereas others are not. I draw distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate, obviously legitimate and not obviously legitimate, and better and worse. The distinctions lead to a different explanation.

Fieldwork in Educational Settings is widely recognised as part of the essential reading for the researcher in education. It instructs those new to qualitative educational research how to find interesting research sites, collect great data, analyse them responsibly, and then find the right audience to hear, use, and build upon their findings successfully. The revised and updated third edition includes the latest developments in authoethnography, data collection, analysis and dissemination, and is illustrated throughout with up-to-the minute examples of real (...) world research. It embraces both sociological and anthropological approaches to qualitative educational research, using case studies from the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand as well as the UK. ‘Education’ is treated broadly, including higher education and non-formal settings as well as schools. Threaded throughout the book is updated content on: the internet and virtual worlds as sites for ethnography, the ethical aspects of ethnographic research, the strengths and weaknesses of autoethnography, the debates about representing data, the impact of technological innovations in all stages of qualitative research. An indispensable introduction for students and novice researchers alike, the new edition continues to illustrate and sustain the increasing popularity of qualitative methods in educational research over the past thirty years_,_ addressing the technological and digital changes that have occurred. (shrink)

Many college and university courses are complemented by collaborative or cooperative activities such as role playing, team projects, or problem solving in small groups. This paper summarizes the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration in professional ethics, describes two courses (Engineering Ethics and Professional Ethics) that involved a fieldwork component where students were required to interview a group of professional who deal with an ethical problem, and articulates the pedagogical value of complementing a course using a fieldwork assignment. By integrating (...) a fieldwork assignment into philosophy courses, students are not only better able to connect classroom learning to concrete ethical problems associated with a given profession but also, since fieldwork is conducted in groups, acquire a deeper understanding of collective moral responsibility. (shrink)

Epistemology, Fieldwork, and Anthropology explores the space between epistemology and methodology, offering a systematic examination of the empirical foundations of interpretations in anthropology. Olivier de Sardan investigates the complex links between the observed reality, data production, and grounded theories, addressing the issues of bias management and the rigor of qualitative methods.

Extensively revised and updated, this new edition of _Fieldwork in Educational Settings_ will be welcomed by researchers and academics in education and the social sciences. Embracing both sociological and anthropological approaches to qualitative research, the book covers education inside and beyond schools. It emphasises writing up ethnographic research and getting the project finished, and is packed with examples from research in progress. This new edition brings the original text right up to date for new researchers. There is an additional chapter (...) on computer software for data handling and attention is given to the implications of postmodernism for writing up research. The examples given are taken from the latest research, replacing those from the first edition. This is an indispensable handbook by an author whose work on this subject is widely recognised as being an essential resource for the researcher in education. (shrink)

In a field like genetic counseling, a medical sociologist is not only a doctor‐watcher but a witness who tries to interpret the moral conflicts that lie beneath the surface of an advancing technology.

This book has two principle aims. The first is to criticize moral relativism by criticizing the claim that there are deep and rationally intractable moral disagreements. The second is to develop an account of morality and moral inquiry that allows for moral objectivity of a sort that relativists would deny, without modeling moral inquiry on scientific inquiry.

This article examines the methods of urban Muslim scholars of the early Abbasid period in their endeavour to collect information from Bedouin informants. Analogies with the problems of modern anthropological fieldwork are investigated, and the impact of the preconceptions and assumptions that the scholars brought to the field is highlighted. It is shown that mediaeval Muslim scholars’ fieldwork might involve varying activities taking place in different settings, and the term ‘Bedouin informants’ masks quite a variety of individuals claiming (...) some expertise in ‘Bedouin’ culture. The idealised image of a scholar heading for the Arabian deserts to visit genuine nomads and make lengthy inquiries among them might be less typical than is often implicitly thought to have been. On the basis of concrete cases of data-collection, three fundamental assumptions heavily influencing the scholars’ thinking regarding Bedouin culture are identified. (shrink)

This paper places the work of a Peruvian NGO, with which the author collaborates, within a broad context of the theory of knowledge. The three members of PRATEC were engaged in different aspects of the development enterprise. Out of their perceived failure of that enterprise, they deprofessionalised themselves and founded this NGO. The author argues that within the professional academic disciplines it is impossible to produce a knowledge that can contribute to the procreative concerns of communities, that is, their concerns (...) about their continuity and well-being. She does a brief historical review of the emergence of the modern University in the nineteenth century and the hidden political agenda of the new so called value- free knowledge it institutionalised. She ends up advocating a rejection of the double participation necessitated by professional academic disciplines. (shrink)

This volume brings together papers that discuss methodological issues in conducting elicitation on semantic topics in a fieldwork situation. Each author pairs explicit methodological proposals with concrete examples of their use in the field. The range of languages discussed span 11 language families and four continents.

In this article, we describe a longitudinal inquiry into what it means to be a person in our contemporary world. Our method constitutes a dynamic, non-objectifying fusion of empirical and philosophical anthropology. Field-based anthropology examines actualities: how people lead their lives and talk about them. Philosophical anthropology addresses possibilities: who and what people could become in light of actualities while not being determined by them. We describe and illustrate our fieldwork in the classrooms of 16 teachers who work in (...) New York City public schools. We have sought in our observations to identify and think about signs or expressions of persons-in-the-making. We also touch on a series of dinner-discussions we have held with the teachers. These meetings have centered on the question of becoming a person in today’s political and cultural environment, and how education figures into the equation. Finally, we also describe the weekly meetings we have held as a research team, in which we engage the play of concepts and percepts. We close with remarks on the conceptual and existential ties that can link philosophy and fieldwork in schools. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 92 Heft: 1 Seiten: 124-147.

This article focuses on what both psychoanalysis and anthropology have in common: the emphasis on the researcher's own experience. An ethnographic fieldwork will be used to illustrate how a psychoanalytical approach unfolds the material when studying conditions for learning from experience among teachers in two Norwegian junior high schools, and also the strong methodological implications of this approach. The researcher's struggle to remain open is elaborated. Here "openness" is regarded as something more than a principle for research practice. It (...) is a way to relate both to oneself and the other, to emotions as well as actions, to the inner as well as the external world. (shrink)

The marriage of Sally Peris Hughes (1895–1984) and Franz Schrader (1891–1962) in November 1920 launched a highly successful scientific collaboration that lasted over four decades. The Schraders were avid naturalists, adroit experimentalists, and keen theoreticians, and both had long, productive, and fruitful careers in zoology. They offer an extraordinarily rich case study that provides an insightful view of the work carried out in several areas of the life sciences from the 1920s to the 1960s—fieldwork, cytology, cytogenetics, and entomology—as well (...) as critical aspects of the social world of contemporary science. By focusing on the fieldwork the couple carried out in Mexico and Central America in the late 1920s and early 1930s, this paper seeks to illuminate how this collaborative scientific marriage embodies a collective, complex, and integrated personal and social arrangement that served to enhance both knowledge production and disciplinary development in several areas of science. It also reveals ways in which marriage could serve as a means to help both parties navigate and negotiate restrictive sociocultural norms and institutional arrangements in science involving gender, power, and authority in the early twentieth century. (shrink)

Undergraduate social work students are exposed to ethical and legal dilemmas during their fieldwork training. This article presents a study that examined these ethical dilemmas in an Israeli sample of undergraduate social work students. 117 students who participated in a course in ethics submitted 31 written presentations of ethical-dilemma analysis. Their oral presentations were recorded and transcribed. Using a qualitative analysis, three major themes emerged: 1. The tension between the duty to maintain client's confidentiality and its violation under certain (...) conditions; 2. The students’ conflict of loyalty toward the client vs. the organization; 3. The question of the clients’ right to self-determination when, in the student's view, this is against their best interests.Our findings point to the vital role of an ethics course in the social work undergraduate curriculum that can enhance students’ knowledge of specific laws relevant to the limits of confidentiality in social work and their ability to analyze ethical dilemmas as future professionals. Furthermore, it is essential to raise awareness in educators and supervisors concerning moral distress that may afflict students coping with ethical dilemmas at this early professional developmental phase. (shrink)

Readers should be aware that the present author’s views are criticized in Moody-Adams’ book. Very few moral theorists escape criticism in this interesting alternative to relativist and realist approaches in contemporary ethical theory. Moody-Adams rejects the relativist claim that there are irresolvable moral disagreements, but does not rest that rejection on the idea of an independently existing moral reality. Indeed, she resolutely rejects attempts to explain moral differences based on the idea that some cultures have a lesser access to a (...) moral reality than others do. All cultures, she holds, have the same fundamental conceptual resources for moral reflection and debate. Such reflection and debate, she goes on to argue, is more a matter of interpretation of the common conceptual resources, rather than inquiry into the nature of an independently existing reality. In staking out such a position, she comes closest to Michael Walzer’s view that the main task of moral philosophy ought to be interpretation of existing tradition, and to Hilary Putnam’s rejection of both relativism and “metaphysical realism.”. (shrink)

The following intellectual as opposed to practical reasons for all anthropologists doing fieldwork are examined: fieldwork: (1) records dying societies, (2) corrects ethnocentric bias, (3) helps put customs in their true context, (4) helps get the "feel" of a place, (5) helps to get to understand a society from the inside, (6) enables appreciation of what translating one culture into terms of another involves, (7) makes one a changed man, (8) provides the observational, factual basis for generalizations. None (...) of these is found sufficient to make fieldwork imperative for all anthropologists, although they are quite sufficient to allow that it is imperative for anthropology as a whole that fieldwork in some form by some people continue. In place of the view of fieldwork as an essential preparation for doing anthropology, an alternative role for it is explored: namely as a testing procedure. The implications of this--that the study of problems and the articulation of theories can usefully proceed prior to or even independently of fieldwork--are drawn out, and a new institution of selective fieldwork is proposed. (shrink)

Rationale A large project was undertaken to examine attitudes and opinions of health staff and parents about the care of hospitalized children in four countries. A simple scoring system, which allowed comparisons between results from each country, was needed to examine concepts under investigation. Aims and objectives This paper describes how, after trialling a range of methods, semantic differentials (SD) were found to be easy for the subjects to use. They translated well into other languages and provided scores which were (...) easy to analyse and compare. Results Semantic differentials are based on a series of line scores using adjectives and their antonyms for a set of characteristics. They are a particularly useful method for fieldwork analysis, as they can be done by hand with no computer support. Conclusions Semantic differentials were found to be useful for cross-cultural, quantitative studies of this kind. I discuss SDs, how they work, their trialling, reliability and validity and their usefulness in cross-cultural research. (shrink)

Jeanette Edwards did fieldwork in the English town of Bacup. Why do fieldwork there? She writes that she is often asked this, whereas the question is unlikely to be asked of an anthropologist who does fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, because it is “axiomatically” an acceptable place for fieldwork. I present two responses to Edwards’ thinking, one of which concerns an asymmetry in how “skeptics” present their questions.

The work of Pierre Bourdieu has had an enormous impact on research in fields as diverse as aesthetics, education, anthropology, and sociology. This is a collection of essays focusing on the contribution of Bourdieu's thought to the study of cultural production.

Fieldwork is one of the important methods in educational, social, and organisational research. In fieldwork, the researcher takes residence for a shorter or longer period amongst the subjects and settings to be studied. The aim of this is to study the culture of people: how people seem to make sense of their lives and which moral, professional, and ethical values seem to guide their behaviour and attitudes. In fieldwork, the researcher has to balance participation and observation in (...) her attempts at representation. Consequently, the researcher's academic and life-historical subjectivity are important filters for fieldwork. In general, fieldwork can be understood as processes where field reports and field analysis are determined by how the researcher interacts with and experiences the field, the events and informants in it, and how she subsequently develops an ethnography. However, fieldwork is also subjected to psychodynamic processes. In this article, I draw upon a number of research inquiries to illustrate how psychodynamic processes influence research processes: data production, research questions and methodology, relations to informants, as well as interpretation and analysis. I further investigate through a case study how the psychoanalytical concepts of "transference" and "institutional transference" can provide insight into the dynamics of efficiency and democracy at a number of Danish human service organisations. (shrink)

Jeanette Edwards sounds as if she wishes to reject the question “Why did you do fieldwork there?” I propose a metaphysical route to this, which is to say, “The self before fieldwork is not my self,” but this conflicts with the traditional Lockean account of personal identity.

Qualitative fieldwork research on sensitive topics sometimes requires that interviewees be granted confidentiality and anonymity. When qualitative researchers later publish their findings, they must ensure that any statements obtained during fieldwork interviews cannot be traced back to the interviewees. Given these protections to interviewees, the integrity of the published findings cannot usually be verified or replicated by third parties, and the scholarly community must trust the word of qualitative researchers when they publish their results. This trust is fundamentally (...) abused, however, when researchers publish articles reporting qualitative fieldwork data that they never collected. Using only publicly available information, I argue that a 2017 article in an Elsevier foreign policy and international relations journal presents anonymised fieldwork interviews that could not have occurred as described. As an exercise in post-publication peer review (PPPR), this paper examines the evidence that calls into question the reliability of the putative fieldwork quotations. I show further that the 2017 article is not a unique case. The anonymity and confidentiality protections common in some areas of research create an ethical problem: the protections necessary for obtaining research data can be used as a cover to hide substandard research practices as well as research misconduct. (shrink)

Moody-Adams has written an in-depth and comprehensive book that scrutinizes relativists’ claims of the reality of “rationally irresolvable moral disagreement”. Tight arguments are offered challenging the misconceptions about morality, culture, and other anthropological issues that are employed to demonstrate the validity of moral relativism. Furthermore, there is an original reconception of the tasks of moral philosophy with an emphasis on the nature of moral inquiry.

Following the tradition of comparing humans with chimpanzees placed under unfavorable conditions, the authors suggest many uniquely human technological abilities. However, chimpanzees use spontaneously tools in nature to achieve many different goals demonstrating technological skills and reasoning contradicting the authors contrast. Chimpanzees and humans develop skills through the experiences faced during their upbringing and neglecting this leads to fake conclusions.