John Forrest - Doing Field Projects

Most digital cameras nowadays can also take video, but they are limited in this respect. The built-in microphones are usually of poor quality, and video gobbles up memory and battery. They also tend to have time limits on recordings to prevent filling the memory card. If you have ambitions of making field videos of any length, you will need a dedicated video camera with an adequate external microphone.

A number of projects in this volume are designed to be completed online, or they have an online option. Most of these projects are best completed using a laptop or desktop computer with an ample monitor and a webcam (either built in or external), although many are also designed with a smartphone in mind. For projects that involve heavy visuals, a desktop or laptop is the better option rather than a smartphone. Smartphone cameras are limited and their screens are too small to capture much other than a single person, whereas a laptop or desktop monitor can display a wide field of vision, or multiple people, at the same time. You will also need reliable high-speed internet access – emphasis on reliable. Before you begin any online projects, thoroughly test your internet service to be sure that heavy usage for an hour or more is not likely to result in dropped links or frozen screens. There can be no certainty in this regard, but you need to take all necessary precautions to limit the chances of failure.

If you are doing a number of these projects for some kind of course of study or training, I strongly advise you to keep a personal journal (in the spirit of Malinowski’s Diary ). A journal has several functions. The projects themselves have a built-in self-critical component, and this is an important part of each exercise. A journal has a somewhat different purpose, although self-critical analysis needs to be in there. It is crucial to realize that a journal is not a public document; it is your private space for ruminations. It is for your eyes only. You can note down anything in a journal that comes to your mind at the time – including what you had for lunch or if it was raining on the way to an interview. You should not spend much time thinking about what is and is not relevant as a journal entry. It is a written version of your inner monolog, so that anything and everything are relevant.

Reflexivity (pp 20–21) is not a necessary component of many of the projects in this book, but an assessment of your successes and failures each time is essential. Personal ruminations on how well you think you are doing, what things you can do differently, fears you have, and the like are part of the ongoing process of maturing as a fieldworker and should be recorded. The individual entries can serve as a guide concerning your personal motivations, for example, when you are writing up the results of each project, but the journal also has the long-term benefit of being a permanent record of your inner workings as a fieldworker, and can be consulted long after your training has finished.

Because fieldwork is the study of people, following ethical principles is especially important. I address specific ethical issues as they arise in relation to the projects in this book and in each case I give detailed instructions and caveats. Here I want to underscore general ethical guidelines that are always applicable. These guidelines are in place both for the protection of the people you interact with, and for your own protection. First, consider the ethical guidelines established by the American Anthropological Association. The full text of the latest (2012) Principles of Professional Responsibility can be found here: http://ethics.americananthro.org/category/statement. This Statement is divided into sections that are self-explanatory and should be read in detail. Each section has a list of citations (with links) that you can also consult.

1 Do No Harm

2 Be Open and Honest Regarding Your Work.

3 Obtain Informed Consent and Necessary Permissions.

4 Weigh Competing Ethical Obligations Due Collaborators and Affected Parties.

5 Make Your Results Accessible.

6 Protect and Preserve Your Records.

7 Maintain Respectful and Professional Relationships.

You may also consult: Ethics and Anthropology: Ideas and Practice by Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban (Lanham, Maryland: AltaMira Press, 2013)

Not all the ethical points raised in the AAA’s Statement are germane to the projects in this book; they cover the full range of professional fieldwork endeavors. The following is a discussion of some of the key points that are most relevant to the projects in this book.

The promise to “Do No Harm” comes from the Hippocratic Oath for physicians, but it equally applies to ethnography. Physicians have their own ethical dilemmas to contend with, but yours are somewhat similar, somewhat different. When physicians want to suggest a risky or experimental procedure that might potentially cause harm, they are ethically obligated to discuss the procedure with their patients. An analogous situation can occur during fieldwork. All information is power, and that information has the potential to do harm. Fieldworkers are obliged to protect their informants and themselves from physical, psychological, and other types of harm.

Imagine, for example, you want to map the layout of supermarket shelves, and, having obtained the requisite informed consent of the manager or owner, you proceed to gather data. In the course of your investigations you determine that product placement on the shelves is directly linked to the store’s profitability. Items with the highest profit margin for the store are placed at eye level within easy reach, whereas those with the lowest profit margin are harder to access. You map the store with this research question in mind, and then produce a finished map. Such “insight” is not exactly breaking news, but its dissemination is potentially damaging to the store’s bottom line. You have to consider your ethical obligations in this regard. If you are open with the manager, and he/she agrees that you may proceed, you have fulfilled your ethical obligation, but you must still decide whether the conclusions that you reach outweigh the potential harm caused by their dissemination. That equation must always be in your mind.

Take, for example, a situation that occurred to Katie Nelson when she worked with a group of 10 undocumented Mexican immigrant college students in Minnesota, USA, for 13 months. She was studying this population as part of her doctoral research looking at identity formation and contestation among undocumented youth in the context of national discourses and labels that tend to dehumanize, marginalize, and discriminate against them. As part of her research strategy she collected detailed life history interviews of each of her primary informants. After her fieldwork period came to an end, Nelson included the life histories in her 250-page dissertation, which she planned to publish. After consulting with her academic advisors and other colleagues she came to the decision that in order to protect her informants from any harm the publication of her work might cause, she would use pseudonyms to obscure their true names and identities.

After completing the dissertation, she shared the completed draft with her informants for their feedback. On the whole they were pleased with the way Nelson portrayed them in her work, yet one informant didn’t want to be represented using a pseudonym. Instead, he asked Nelson to use his true name in the written document. In the time since Nelson had interviewed him, this young man had become an outspoken local activist for the rights of the undocumented in Minnesota and U.S. society. He wanted his true name to be used so his activism work would be documented and substantiated by Nelson’s research. Additionally, a new executive action initiative established by President Obama had taken place, which had shifted the political landscape. After discussing the issue with him further, Nelson’s informant felt the Deferred Action measure provided him some protection from future deportation and thus a pseudonym was not necessary. Nelson, however, still had some doubts. She knew the Deferred Action could be reversed in future when another U.S. president took power. This would put her informant at risk for discovery and possible deportation. She wanted to protect all her informants from harm, but also wanted to meet her informant’s wishes.