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