Transparency, openness, & ethnography in democratic contexts
Posted: Mon May 02, 2016 10:44 am
There has been quite a bit of discussion about what DA-RT would mean for ethnographic research, and for research taking place under less than ideal conditions, such as in authoritarian regimes, or with otherwise vulnerable research subjects. Here I wish to add in some of the implications for those of us working with living populations even in “ideal” circumstances — for example, conducting ethnographic research in an “advanced” democracy.
I see DART/JETS as, at its core, a conversation about research ethics, which I suspect we don’t talk about enough in political science.
Research ethics invites thinking about our obligations as researchers. To whom are we obligated? For those of us who work with living populations, the answer is obvious: we have the obligation not to cause harm to our “human subjects.” To this end, in the US, our practices are governed by IRBs, which assess our protocols for such risks. IRBs are by no means perfect mechanisms for research oversight, for example, protocol requirements seem much more geared towards the concerns of medical and psychological studies than they do towards studies based on everyday interactions. But the process of obtaining IRB approval for my research did make me think about research ethics very carefully.
I have often grappled with the role of transparency in my own, ethnographically-driven dissertation research on the politics of the financial crisis in Iceland. My field research methods training took place in my university’s anthropology department, and research ethics were major considerations in project and IRB protocol design. Traditionally in ethnographic writing, place names and names of people appearing in the study are changed to protect confidentiality. But as ethnographic research has become more participatory, anthropologists have moved away from the old conventions. Indeed, the terminology has changed from “research subjects” to “research participants.” Along with this, there has been some movement toward using the real names of people and places, in appropriate circumstances. This is not only for the sake of transparency but also in recognition of the agency of the participants involved in the study, including acknowledging that they are not merely anonymous “subjects” but rather actual people with whom the researcher has forged an ongoing relationship.
These practices are by no means appropriate for all ethnographic studies, but they were for mine. In my IRB informed consent document, I offer interview participants the option to be represented by their full name, first name only, or I can attempt to anonymize them, if I want to quote them in my writing. In the first option, I would run the quote by them before using it attached to their full name. The protocol recognizes that anonymity and confidentiality are distinct concepts, that the former may be impossible in a context like Iceland, and that personal harm is unlikely to derive from using real names. I strongly doubt that this would be appropriate, for example, for research in Turkey that has even a whiff of potential political controversy. Even in my case, it does not make putting interview transcripts in a shareable repository ethical. For researchers working with real people, their ethical obligations are to *those people* before and beyond obligations to research transparency or replicability.
I spent over a year getting to know my interlocutors so that they would speak freely with me. And getting to know them entailed not only repeated conversations, but also familiarity with everyday existence in their city, with the rhythms of ordinary and extraordinary politics, with the way that prices in the grocery store rose or fell with the exchange rate. I would not expect someone without the same familiarity with my field site (and not just the site as such, but at that particular time) to glean the same interpretations from my interview transcripts as I would.
Furthermore, my interviews capture what my participants were thinking at that time. It is entirely possible that someone could go and interview the same people, asking the same questions, and find that those people have revised their positions and thinking since that time. I know I have. My research may be not be conducive to replication, but that does not make it invalid. Rather, it makes my findings a product of a particular time, place, and interactions that are also intimately linked to my own positionality as a researcher.
Iceland is a country of 320,000 people. It is widely considered to be one of the most democratic countries in the world. Yet anonymity is nearly impossible there. It is a society that highlights the advantages — and disadvantages — of transparency because in some ways it is a fact of life. Before the 2008 financial crisis, public protest was seen by many as socially undesirable and somewhat shameful. Some of my participants described wearing ski masks or skulking in the back of the initial post-crisis demonstrations so that they would not be seen, either by others in the crowd or by falling into scenes captured and circulated by the media. Among other concerns, they feared retaliation from their employers, who might hold divergent political opinions or disapprove of contentious practices. Those who did not see themselves as dependent upon Icelandic society for their livelihoods — often artists — became the most visible organizers of collective action. Similarly, I found that many people were reluctant to share their perspective or opinion about topics on which they did not feel they had the authority to speak, even though, as it often turned out, they did have a valuable perspective to share! The point is that transparency does not necessarily promote openness.
I do not believe that this project would have been possible if part of the expectation was that interview transcripts and field notes would have been made publicly accessible. In this project, I believe that there is no way to remove identifying information from an interview transcript while retaining any meaningful data.
For all of their limitations, the advantage of IRBs is that they approach research ethics on a case-by-case basis. A protocol that might be appropriate for one study may not be appropriate in the next. In describing my own project, I have tried to show the ways in which I attempt to navigate the ethic of transparency. Giving participants a choice in how they are represented in my work is one way of accomplishing greater transparency, not only for my audience but also for my participants. But the local conditions, which I only learned about as a consequence of taking part in Icelandic life, contraindicate sharing whole transcripts or field notes. Can DA-RT standards be made sensitive enough to these considerations without imposing another layer of bureaucracy on researchers working with living populations? I suspect that the answer is no.
I see DART/JETS as, at its core, a conversation about research ethics, which I suspect we don’t talk about enough in political science.
Research ethics invites thinking about our obligations as researchers. To whom are we obligated? For those of us who work with living populations, the answer is obvious: we have the obligation not to cause harm to our “human subjects.” To this end, in the US, our practices are governed by IRBs, which assess our protocols for such risks. IRBs are by no means perfect mechanisms for research oversight, for example, protocol requirements seem much more geared towards the concerns of medical and psychological studies than they do towards studies based on everyday interactions. But the process of obtaining IRB approval for my research did make me think about research ethics very carefully.
I have often grappled with the role of transparency in my own, ethnographically-driven dissertation research on the politics of the financial crisis in Iceland. My field research methods training took place in my university’s anthropology department, and research ethics were major considerations in project and IRB protocol design. Traditionally in ethnographic writing, place names and names of people appearing in the study are changed to protect confidentiality. But as ethnographic research has become more participatory, anthropologists have moved away from the old conventions. Indeed, the terminology has changed from “research subjects” to “research participants.” Along with this, there has been some movement toward using the real names of people and places, in appropriate circumstances. This is not only for the sake of transparency but also in recognition of the agency of the participants involved in the study, including acknowledging that they are not merely anonymous “subjects” but rather actual people with whom the researcher has forged an ongoing relationship.
These practices are by no means appropriate for all ethnographic studies, but they were for mine. In my IRB informed consent document, I offer interview participants the option to be represented by their full name, first name only, or I can attempt to anonymize them, if I want to quote them in my writing. In the first option, I would run the quote by them before using it attached to their full name. The protocol recognizes that anonymity and confidentiality are distinct concepts, that the former may be impossible in a context like Iceland, and that personal harm is unlikely to derive from using real names. I strongly doubt that this would be appropriate, for example, for research in Turkey that has even a whiff of potential political controversy. Even in my case, it does not make putting interview transcripts in a shareable repository ethical. For researchers working with real people, their ethical obligations are to *those people* before and beyond obligations to research transparency or replicability.
I spent over a year getting to know my interlocutors so that they would speak freely with me. And getting to know them entailed not only repeated conversations, but also familiarity with everyday existence in their city, with the rhythms of ordinary and extraordinary politics, with the way that prices in the grocery store rose or fell with the exchange rate. I would not expect someone without the same familiarity with my field site (and not just the site as such, but at that particular time) to glean the same interpretations from my interview transcripts as I would.
Furthermore, my interviews capture what my participants were thinking at that time. It is entirely possible that someone could go and interview the same people, asking the same questions, and find that those people have revised their positions and thinking since that time. I know I have. My research may be not be conducive to replication, but that does not make it invalid. Rather, it makes my findings a product of a particular time, place, and interactions that are also intimately linked to my own positionality as a researcher.
Iceland is a country of 320,000 people. It is widely considered to be one of the most democratic countries in the world. Yet anonymity is nearly impossible there. It is a society that highlights the advantages — and disadvantages — of transparency because in some ways it is a fact of life. Before the 2008 financial crisis, public protest was seen by many as socially undesirable and somewhat shameful. Some of my participants described wearing ski masks or skulking in the back of the initial post-crisis demonstrations so that they would not be seen, either by others in the crowd or by falling into scenes captured and circulated by the media. Among other concerns, they feared retaliation from their employers, who might hold divergent political opinions or disapprove of contentious practices. Those who did not see themselves as dependent upon Icelandic society for their livelihoods — often artists — became the most visible organizers of collective action. Similarly, I found that many people were reluctant to share their perspective or opinion about topics on which they did not feel they had the authority to speak, even though, as it often turned out, they did have a valuable perspective to share! The point is that transparency does not necessarily promote openness.
I do not believe that this project would have been possible if part of the expectation was that interview transcripts and field notes would have been made publicly accessible. In this project, I believe that there is no way to remove identifying information from an interview transcript while retaining any meaningful data.
For all of their limitations, the advantage of IRBs is that they approach research ethics on a case-by-case basis. A protocol that might be appropriate for one study may not be appropriate in the next. In describing my own project, I have tried to show the ways in which I attempt to navigate the ethic of transparency. Giving participants a choice in how they are represented in my work is one way of accomplishing greater transparency, not only for my audience but also for my participants. But the local conditions, which I only learned about as a consequence of taking part in Icelandic life, contraindicate sharing whole transcripts or field notes. Can DA-RT standards be made sensitive enough to these considerations without imposing another layer of bureaucracy on researchers working with living populations? I suspect that the answer is no.