Navigating Boundaries in Ethnographic Fieldwork
On Friday the 5th of November, members of the CADS Institute engaged in a lively roundtable lunch discussion on navigating boundaries in ethnographic fieldwork. The roundtable was intended to share experiences and open up questions about navigating proximity and distance when engaging in research relationships. How do we position ourselves as researchers in politically and morally charged situations? When do we intervene or withdraw? And what do we do when our need to take care of ourselves complicates, or even forecloses, our involvement with research collaborators? This article is a report of the roundtable written by Annemarie Samuels.
Guest speaker Professor Hansjörg Dilger (FU Berlin) and Institute members Dr. Andrew Littlejohn and Dr. Natashe Lemos Dekker kicked off the discussion by sharing their insights from previous fieldwork experiences. Hansjörg Dilger, for instance, proposed to critically rethink the principle of ‘do no harm’ as the first principle of ethnographic fieldwork, as it assumes a power relation that cannot be taken at face value. What, he asked, if we start from an ethic of care? And how does self-care of the researcher figure in our ethical deliberations? In so doing, he stressed the importance of realizing that as researchers we will necessarily have a role in complex social relationships in the field. Andrew Littlejohn put forward another ethical question: How do we know if the questions we ask in the field will not have a negative emotional effect on our interlocutors, especially when we study sensitive and potentially traumatic topics? When is asking questions an act of care, and when, on the other hand, should we refrain from asking, respecting silence while waiting for our interlocutors to address specific, sensitive topics? Natashe Lemos Dekker sketched the possibility of a literal boundary, the doorstep, or threshold, on which the ethnographer may be standing – quietly assessing whether stepping into a room will be welcomed or seen as an intrusion. How often it is indeed that we stand there, at the literal or metaphorical doorstep, sensing the atmosphere, waiting to be invited in or reaching out to establish a relationship? How does navigating this boundary become an ethnographic skill?
Is asking questions an act of care?
Andrew Littlejohn put forward another ethical question: How do we know if the questions we ask in the field will not have a negative emotional effect on our interlocutors, especially when we study sensitive and potentially traumatic topics? When is asking questions an act of care, and when, on the other hand, should we refrain from asking, respecting silence while waiting for our interlocutors to address specific, sensitive topics? Natashe Lemos Dekker sketched the possibility of a literal boundary, the doorstep, or threshold, on which the ethnographer may be standing – quietly assessing whether stepping into a room will be welcomed or seen as an intrusion. How often it is indeed that we stand there, at the literal or metaphorical doorstep, sensing the atmosphere, waiting to be invited in or reaching out to establish a relationship? How does navigating this boundary become an ethnographic skill?
Romanticized notion of fieldwork
During the ensuing conversation with the audience, a range of crucial questions and topics were brought up. These included situations of drawing boundaries for self-care: can we build in moments of withdrawing ourselves from the field? How do we do so when a research topic is very close to our everyday lives? Several participants pointed at the problematic romanticized notion of fieldwork as transgressing boundaries, resulting in researchers experiencing the pressure to open up and take risks they would normally eschew. A more open discussion about sexual harassment during fieldwork and other ways in which the researcher can experience being taken advantage of will be necessary to correct this image and make ethnographers – including students – aware that they have the right to draw boundaries in order to take care of themselves. An ethic of care in representation presented another important topic. For example, what do we mean by ‘do no harm’ when talking to perpetrators? How do we write about these situations? And, what if we don’t want to reproduce a dominant negative image of our field, and yet be realistic about the problems we observed?
Learning to navigate boundaries in ethnographic fieldwork
Finally, participants discussed managing expectations of their collaborators and interlocutors in the field. What happens to transparency if, despite recurrent explanations, interlocutors do not recognize one as a researcher? How to manage unrealistic expectations of the (policy) benefits that our research may bring? Clear communication about expectations was brought up as a possible answer, as was the need to recognize the many small acts of care and other positive contributions to relationships we make in the field. These questions and the many experiences that all participants brought to the discussion opened up a space for sharing and learning to navigate boundaries in ethnographic fieldwork. This is a conversation that is in essence unfinished, and thus one that requires ongoing attention.
This roundtable discussion was supported by the Leiden University Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology and the ERC-funded Globalizing Palliative Care research project.