Ten Lies of Ethnography: Moral Dilemmas of Field Research

Text Exploration

In this text, the author identifies a variety of ways ethnographers present and view themselves, and describes why these are lies—that while commonly believed in the profession, these types of manifestations of self are simply not possible.

All professions have portions that are presented falsely or incompletely to those outside of the profession. This is an “underside” to the work, and these illusions are “necessary for occupational survival.” Often, the illusions are couched in moral decisions intertwined with practical decisions; no one may want to “see the sausage being made,” for a variety of reasons.

Ethnography is no different, and the author delineates ten different forms of this underside of work. He presents these as lies that practitioners tell themselves, or tell others, about the profession.

Some researchers present themselves as being “kindly” and sympathetic to the needs of their participants. As a result, they may then view their participants’ antagonists as their own. Others view themselves as ‘friendly” (or temporarily friendly), as if they like each of the participants involved in their studies. This is impossible, and when we encounter people we don’t actually like, “we crop them from the picture.” The researcher is a gatekeeper. Researchers sometimes view themselves as being honest, and feel that they must reveal a research protocol in its entirety to participants, but “all research is secret in some ways, because subjects can never know everything.”

The author then describes lies that researchers tell themselves related more to technical skills than to virtues. One is that researchers are precise in their notetaking and remembering, as if field notes can be perfect representations of what was said or done. This is impossible, but is presented to offer scientific justification to the work as being rigorous. Similarly, ethnographers often present themselves as fully observant; but the author argues that if a researcher is looking at one thing, they are not looking at another.

Unobtrusiveness is another way researchers view themselves and their roles: that they can fade into the background and “influence the scene as little as possible.” But “we can never be a cipher.”

The author describes a last set of lies that researchers tell themselves, about themselves. The first is the idea that they are candid passive observers, as presented to their peers; they are conducting “good ethnography” in order to substantiate their careers as strong researchers. The author also describes a “chaste” ethnographer, as if researchers never find themselves in intimate positions with their participants.

Researchers feel that they are fair, and they can be objective, or present ideas as balanced from all perspectives. Objectivity is “snuggled in the comforting blanket of positivism—that the world is ultimately knowable and secure.” But this is incorrect, as researchers always have a perspective. Some researchers feel that admitting the perspective then indicates that they can somehow regain fairness.

The last lie that ethnographers tell themselves is that they are literary, and that they are able to write effectively in order to share their work with a larger scholarly community. Some are simply poor writers, while others are overly academic in their documentation, and so the output of the research does not effectively inscribe what was done and learned.

The author concludes by noting his goal is to expose the claims of the collective profession of ethnography, but these lies are “the reality we must embrace.”