The Challenges and Predicaments of Doing Embedded Fieldwork in Sociology: Shifting Roles of a Researcher in the Study of Social Compliance Audit

Abstract

This paper seeks to recount the challenges and predicaments of doing fieldwork in the discipline of sociology with the central focus on ethnographic techniques of data collection. The paper is based on the specific challenges encountered by the researcher while doing the study of Social Compliance Audit (SCA). This paper draws from two bouts of fieldwork; each very different from the other. My first encounter is with the practice of SCA as a graduate of sociology, working in the corporate sector as a social compliance auditor. My second as a scholar enrolled for PhD program researching on social compliance audit. The two locations offered very different vantage points of enquiry. As an auditor, my brief was laid out; a given whose protocols I had to follow. SCA was a known and necessary entity for the managerial staff in the garment industry. As a PhD scholar I realized it was virtually unknown in the academic community of sociology, even within studies on labor. There are two clear challenges that I faced while conducting fieldwork for my PhD. One, that SCA was relatively unfamiliar as an object for sociological enquiry. And two, the predicaments of doing qualitative research on sites and people who had their own ideas of how SCA ought to be studies. Here, the field encountered is analysed as a method of knowledge production and the ethnographer is placed at the centre of drama.