Becoming a Nonexpert and Other Strategies for Managing Fieldwork Dilemmas in the Criminal Justice System

Abstract

In this article, the author presents three fieldwork strategies for managing role conflict in criminal justice settings. One of the most critical issues for ethnographers immersed in fieldwork is balancing the tension between the researcher and participant-observation roles. Ethnographers in criminal justice settings as well as other types of street-level bureaucracies are commonly confronted with dilemmas involving physical risk, highly sensitive data, marginalized clientele, and the exploitive use of power and domination by institutional gatekeepers. Researchers venturing into challenging fieldwork settings, such as criminal justice environments, must be highly attuned to the constraints and opportunities for collecting data. The author argues that these strategies can augment ethnographers' "data collection toolkit" to better address fieldwork problems. In addition, deploying these strategies can help to reveal unforeseen findings in the study.

Exploring Multiple Identities as a Health Care Ethnographer

“…Anchoring or distancing one's self from either researcher or participant positions is thought to facilitate greater research access and rapport and to assist the researcher to manage expectations and ethical problems (Castellano, 2007). In my ethnography, I was no longer contributing to the clinical work of the team and hospital staff members were no longer my peers.…”

“…In the broader literature on ethnography, fieldworkers are encouraged to bring different aspects of themselves to the fore in response to the particular context and the various situations that arise (Castellano, 2007;Mazzei & O'Brien, 2009). Anchoring or distancing one's self from either researcher or participant positions is thought to facilitate greater research access and rapport and to assist the researcher to manage expectations and ethical problems (Castellano, 2007).…”

Monitorização neoliberal e decisões éticas na etnografia: algumas reflexões

“…(Haimes 2002: 113). Ethnographers of crime and deviance, given the tensional, often radically contrasting settings in which they conduct their studies, are almost inevitably pushed to embracing personally challenging meta-ethical questions (see, for instance, recent research by Castellano 2007;Ferdinand et al 2007;Diphoorn 2013;Haimes 2002). Elsewhere, Neves and Malafaia (2016: 52-53) highlight how impression management aimed at naturalizing the ethnographer's presence in the field involves a degree of relational manipulation and parasitical predation of the expectations of the research subjects.…”

“…In the 1920s, Malinowski (1984Malinowski ( [1922) had already pointed out that inside knowledge is a central feature of ethnography, although his personal diaries demonstrated prejudices which contaminated his integrity of respect for other ways of being. Anthropologically developed knowledge emerges from the ability -and the tension -of being simultaneously in and out of the researched group, close and distant, participating but not being or becoming a full member (Adler, Adler and Rochford 1986;Castellano 2007;Hammersley and Atkinson 2007;Lewis and Russell 2011).…”

From “being there” to “being […] where?”: relocating ethnography

“…between participant and observer roles in participant-observation, Castellano 2007). However, elsewhere in organizational studies we have seen a shift away from empirical and theoretical concerns with 'role' and an increasing interest in 'identity construction' (Simpson and Carroll 2008;Ibarra and Barbulescu 2010;Dutton et al, 2010).…”