One of the most powerful articles I ever read, in 1988 or so (this so
you'll forgive no name, no title, after five years, I still suffer from
dissertation alzheimer's), was a reflective piece on ethics & disclosure by
an ethnographer who had been studying police work. During one of his
ride-alongs with his informants, the two officers got into an altercation
with a man and beat him up so badly he ended up in the hospital. The man
sued the police dep. and the ethnographer's field notes were subpoenaed.
The PD was bringing up the man on several serious charges. This exchange
of legal threats eventually led to both parties dropping suits & charges.
On one level, there were the obvious ethical issues brought into sharp
relief by the episode: up to what point do you respect privacy?
confidentiality? when the people you are protecting have committed a
heinous act?
But on another, far more powerful level, a far more difficult issue emerged
through the story: the ethnographer eventually came to realize that the
beating took place in part because the officers were showing off to him.
To what extent was he responsible? I always admired him, by the way, for
not shrugging off that responsibility with ready-made rationalizations, for
not deflecting it back to the activity system he was visiting...
My classmates and I (we read the article for a class on ethnographic field
methods) had a long and animated discussion along the line of, what to do
if you find yourself in that situation. Several said, I would have walked
away from this then and there. My own more selfish reaction was along the
lines of, hell, I'm gonna make damn sure I never GET myself into such a
situation in the first place! Computer Lab, here I come!
Disclosure...well, one of the points made in "The lying game," by
DeCastell, is that it is perhaps even more important to examine purpose and
motive for disclosure, to do a ruthless accounting of the way disclosure is
recycled and used not only in your own work but in subsequent
appropriations and iterations. An easy example: If, as an ethnographer, I
choose to focus on the violence & threats of violence in inner-city
children's lives, I can actually get serious mileage out of it--and feed
right into the Beirut-model of the inner city I find really annoying.
Alas, so far, I haven't found another computer lab to run to, though I am
making progress...
genevieve