Day Six: Reflexivity

SDS 237: Data Ethnography

Lindsay Poirier
Statistical & Data Sciences, Smith College

Fall 2023

Imagine that you are an ethnographer attending Astro Hack Week. Pull out a sheet of paper and jot your name in the center. Around your name, list aspects of your cultural identity that would be important to acknowledge as you studied this space.

Turn to your neighbor and discuss:

  • Why would it be important to consider these aspects of your cultural identity as you engaged in ethnographic fieldwork?

What were some takeaways from Tuesday’s class?

Common Rule

  • In the US, research organizations receiving federal funding are subject to the Common Rule
    • Laws and regulations regarding how Institutional Review Boards are to operate
    • IRBs are organizational bodies that review the ethics of human subjects research in order to protect human welfare, rights, and privacy before a study gets carried out
  • Usually composed of representatives from an institution with a diverse background

Tuskegee Study

  • Conducted from 1932 to 1972 by US Public Health Services and Center for Disease Control, in collaboration with Tuskegee University in Alabama
  • Involved 400 African Americans with syphilis
  • Study of leaving the disease untreated even though it was treatable
    • Were told they would receive free medical care
    • Never informed of their diagnosis
    • Provided with placebos and ineffective methods

Facebook’s Emotional Contagion Study

  • January 2012, Facebook data scientists manipulated what 700,000 users saw on feeds to examine emotional contagion
    • Some shown happy, positive content
    • Others shown sad, negative content
  • Legal?
  • Ethical?

Ethics of ethnographic research

  • Ethnography different than many other forms of human subjects research in that it takes place in natural settings vs in clinical settings
  • Question of how to balance benefits of the research with the potential harms posed to the participants
  • Potential harms:
    • Reputation
    • Disclosure of personal information
    • Disruption of relationships
    • Loss of claims

Reading Discussion

Critiques and Criticisms of Ethnographic Research

  • Ethnographic research (like many other forms of research) has been historically complicit in imperialism and colonialism
  • Methods emerged as part of European colonial efforts to document folks “Native” to “other” lands - often to enable control and exploitation of those cultures
  • Many binary oppositions indicate how power operated here:
    • Studier/studied
    • Researcher/researched
  • Concerns over who gets to “write culture”

Reflexive Turn

  • Emerged in the 1970s as a result of feminist and post-colonial critiques
    • Feminist: Where do we stand? Can we ever observe from an objective or neutral place?
    • Post-colonial: What do we consider “Other,” and how do we portray what is “Other”?
  • Called on ethnographers to engage in self-reflection (standpoints, assumptions, etc.)
  • Can we write another culture “objectively” when our own biases and epistemologies, and social capital are inevitably involved in the research?

…aka the Literary Turn

  • Ethnography was often understood to be about writing (documenting observations and interpreting them)
  • Began to pay attention to power in the language used to “write culture”
    • Binary oppositions
    • Genre and representations of “fact”
  • Called for making ethnographic writing more polyphonous (or represent a plurality of voices)
  • Sometimes invited “poetics” and “experimentalism”

In other words, there are political reasons as to why the fieldnotes that you read felt different than other scientific genres!

Reflexivity for Each of our Methods

  • Participant Observation
    • Observing interaction and behaviors “in the field”
  • Interviewing
    • Engaging in semi-structured conversations with informants
  • Archival Research
    • Curating and interpreting historical documents and artifacts
  • Discourse analysis
    • Interpreting the cultural meaning interwoven in texts and speech

In your groups, be sure to introduce yourselves to each other (pronouns, majors, etc.)