13. In developing and sustaining ethnographic relationships, it is helpful to bring food, provide reciprocity in some way, or (if possible) offer an honorarium for participation. If cost is an issue, there are also inexpensive options such as framed photos, CDs burned at home, or photo albums.
14. I taped conversations, conducted separately, with Wendy Driver, Ms. Driver, Mr. Handlon, and Ms. Yanelli. Mr. Yanelli refused to be taped, although he did listen from the living room as I taped my discussion with Ms. Yanelli in the kitchen.
15. After drafting a brief summary of each family’s reaction to the book, I mailed four of the nine families a package with a copy of my draft of their reaction and a letter inviting them to either write their own summary of how they reacted (which I promised would be reproduced, unedited, in the second edition of the book) or edit my version. As a friendly gesture, I also included a box of chocolates. I had working addresses for all the families except the Drivers and McAllisters. The McAllisters had moved again, and the telephone numbers I had were no longer in service. I tried to reach them by leaving a message on a relative’s answering machine, but this strategy was not successful. The Drivers also had moved; I could not reach them via Facebook, telephone white pages, or Google. (Later, Wendy contacted me via Facebook. She updated me on her family and work status. When I suggested that we get together, however, she declined.) Rather than mailing a package to the Yanellis, I went to see the family (bringing my draft summary, beer, and chocolate). Mr. Yanelli said my draft was “on the money,” an accurate statement of their feelings “at that time.” I called the Brindles and left a message; Ms. Brindle immediately returned my call. I later e-mailed the description to her eldest daughter, who read it to her over the phone. Ms. Brindle approved it. I also e-mailed Ms. Taylor. At her suggestion, and with her permission, I replaced my summary with her response to me. For clarification, I added an introductory note and edited her message, particularly for length. The responses of the remaining families varied. The Marshalls contacted me in a warm e-mail; both Ms. Marshall and Stacey wrote to me (separately), saying that they were “comfortable” with the portrait. The Tallingers also responded. Mr. Tallinger edited the summary I had drafted; his edits made it clearer and more precise. His e-mail message was friendly and humorous (he said that they were doing “concerted cultivation” on me). I spoke with Ms. Handlon by phone. She was cool. She said that she had received the package and had given it to Melanie. I indicated that the letter was addressed to her and her husband as well as to Melanie. She said that she would look at it. She did not get back to me. The Williamses did not reply either.
16. Ms. Tallinger ended contact in 2004. In January 2010, though, she responded, in a friendly manner, to a follow-up e-mail I had sent to the family about a package I had sent to the home (with a box of chocolates and a description of the family’s reaction to the book). Correspondence regarding the Tallingers’ reaction was handled exclusively by Mr. Tallinger, however.
17. I did not hear directly from Melanie about how she felt about the book or its description of her. However, she came home while I was interviewing her father. I was sitting on the floor, talking across the coffee table to Mr. Handlon. I stood up and, as Melanie stood next to the piano, told her that I had learned that the book had upset her and that I was very sorry about that. She (keeping her face impassive) nodded but did not chat. My efforts to draw her out were not successful. She disappeared into the back of the house, and I continued my interview with her father.
18. The Williamses’ reaction is more vague than the reactions of the other families. My suspicion is that they were offended by an endnote in the first edition (n. 18, to Chapter 6). In the note, a fieldworker expresses discomfort with a mock game of peek-a-boo in which the parents treat Alexander as if he were a very young child. In addition, from the beginning, Mr. Williams had been unenthusiastic about being in the study; he saw it (correctly enough) as an “invasion of privacy.” The family’s portrait may have made him feel vindicated. Given the e-mail exchange with Ms. Williams, I agonized over whether I should contact them again. In the end, I felt I needed to give them a chance to say their piece (if they wished). I sent them the same sort of package I mailed to the other families, inviting them to summarize their reaction to the book (or edit my draft). I enclosed a CD with a copy of my summary and their e-mail. I received no response.
19. When Stacey was at college a couple of years later, her roommate was reading the book for a class. Stacey revealed that she was in the book.
20. Although Wendy had the book open at this time, the transcription of the tape shows that she made a number of minor modifications as she read the piece aloud. Thus, the quote does not follow the text exactly. Also, in the original field note, this quotation was longer and made it clear that her mother, stepfather, and brother stopped what they were doing, looked at her, and then (after she was finished speaking) returned to looking at the television. Wendy was upset because she felt that the attention her family gave to her was not sufficiently emphasized in the text.
21. At the time, The Oprah Winfrey Show featured a monthly discussion of a book selected by Oprah. The book Ms. Yanelli was referring to was Anna Karenina. Somewhat differently, one colleague told me that ethnography is not “wedding photography.” In retrospect, I think that indeed many of the families thought that the portrait would be similar to a written version of wedding photography, showing the family in the best possible light.
22. For example, throughout this process, I showed normal symptoms of being in a stressful situation, including having trouble sleeping.
23. I ran into the Yanellis in a store a few years later. They were warm and friendly; they looked happy. Billy now had his own apartment. “He even keeps it clean,” his mother marveled. He was working regularly. He was doing well. Mr. and Ms. Yanelli were delighted that their older son and his girlfriend had recently made them grandparents; they looked forward to spending time with the baby.
24. Burawoy, “Revisits,” p. 672.
25. It should be emphasized that not all study participants come away with negative feelings. Some report truly enjoying being in studies. Their involvement makes them feel special; they are excited by the prospect of being discussed in a book; and they draw comfort from being able to talk about private concerns with a nonjudgmental listener. Similarly, despite the very real and painful costs that participation in ethnographic studies can exact from individuals, these costs are surely less than are incurred in other spheres. In medical research, needy individuals in the control group cannot benefit from an experimental drug until after the clinical trial has ended and the drug has been approved. In a recent case of two cousins participating in the same medical study, one died waiting for the treatment to be approved. See Harmon, “Target Cancer.”
26. My experience leads me to urge that the costs of being a study participant be explicitly acknowledged prior to the beginning of a research project. They could be covered in the consent form, under a statement such as “the research could make you uncomfortable” or “the conclusions of the research report may not match your understanding of your life.”
27. See Vidich and Bensman, Small Town in Mass Society, particularly the Afterword with its description of the negative reaction of the community, including his being hung in effigy. Similarly, in the introduction to a special issue assessing Street Corner Society, Peter Adler and the other editors report that “virtually all of Cornerville felt hurt by the publication of Street Corner Society” in 1943 (p. 5). William Lloyd Warner, who studied “Yankee City” (Newburyport, Mass.) in 1949 was famously mocked by John Phillips Marquand through the character of Malcolm Bryant in Marquand’s novel Point of No Return. Studies have also been critically assessed decades later; see W. A. Marianne Boelen, “Street Corner Society,” and the vigorous defense of Whyte by Angelo Ralph Orlandella, “Boelen May Know Holland . . .”
28. See Ellis, “Emotional and Ethical Quagmires”; Stein, “Sex, Truths, and Aud
iotape”; Scheper-Hughes, “Ire in Ireland.”
29. See, for example, the extensive literature on action research or advocacy research. This tradition has a more extensive following in the field of education than in sociology, although there are advocates in sociology as well. See Jack Whitehead and Jean McNiff, Action Research. Some researchers, including Nancy Scheper-Hughes, have called for avoiding the use of pseudonyms.
30. For example, Mitchell Duneier, in the appendix to his book Sidewalk, provides a comical description of his (vain) efforts to gain the attention and approval of the Greenwich Village street vendors he studied as he read aloud sections of the draft that involved them.
31. Some researchers have sought to resolve these questions by more directly privileging the voices of the respondents. Publishing portions of an unedited interview transcript is one approach. Others provide an analysis, but see a primary purpose of the piece as an opportunity to tell the stories of underrepresented groups. See, among others, Eddah Mutua Kombo, “Their Words, Actions, and Meaning.” Still, it was the researcher, not the respondent, who conceptualized the study, decided what questions to ask, and edited (most of) the transcript for publication. This also does not address the issue of the researcher’s career advancement. If a researcher genuinely shares control of the writing with respondents, then it will be harder to comply with the criteria for publication in peer-reviewed journals. Some ethnographers have retreated into the study of themselves, creating the subfield of autoethnography. See Carolyn Ellis and Arthur P. Bochner, “Analyzing Analytic Autoethnography.” Others have engaged in community-based research. Alisa Lincoln reported, for example, a study where an ethnographer co-authored a piece with eighteen clients who had a major mental illness. The piece could not be published until every single co-author signed off. In some cases, the refusal of clients to approve a publication could harm a young scholar’s career (personal communication, January 27, 2011). See also Lassiter, Collaborative Ethnography.
32. Hugh Mehan commented, “I have been in similar situations—trying to depict events honestly while at the same time trying to ensure that the voices of the participants are rendered accurately. For our book [Mehan et al.,] Constructing School Success, I had promised the AVID folks access to the [manuscript] before publication. The AVID director reacted extremely negatively about certain points—which led to a succession of Friday afternoon sessions going over portions of the ms that she found offensive. We discussed. We argued. We settled on changes—ones that were not so volatile, but did not alter the argument. I made some acknowledgement of that situation in introductory material” (personal communication, August 31, 2009). Tim Black followed a similar approach for his book, When a Heart Turns Rock Solid. In a talk on his research on community organizers (which does not use pseudonyms), Mark Warren emphasizes the importance of building collaborative relationships with the groups he studies. This is not always easy, and sometimes the process of recruiting organizations to the study can be seen as “seduction” and the sharing of the results, especially when the results expose problems, as “betrayal.” He describes the interactions as “hot and heavy” with one organization, though it was much less contentious with other organizations. As he wrote, “Even in the more contentious cases, the team worked hard to reach some consensus on what was acceptable.” Personal communication, October 31, 2010. See Warren, “A Collaborative Approach to Ethnographic Case Study Research.”
33. See Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández’s Best of the Best for a thoughtful account of the experience of privilege in an elite boarding school. Gaztambide-Fernández offers insight regarding the experience of students, but his work contains little about the foibles, missteps, or inadequacies of the institution. He reports that was not deliberate, but rather “it reflects the fact that the book is not about the school itself, but about how the students construct elite identifications. I wanted to understand what the school does best: convince students that they are ‘the best of the best.’” Personal communication, October 17, 2010.
34. As I have already explained, the Yanellis and I did repair our relationship. I doubt that would have been possible, however, if I had published the gist of the analysis after knowing their objections. I continue to send holiday cards to Billy, as well as to the other young adults and families that wish to remain in touch with me (and for whom I have addresses). I now send food or tuck a somewhat larger bill ($20) into the envelope; and, if the young adults have children, I send gift cards from a store such as Target for them.
35. The phrase of finding a balance that is “right for them” is from Shana Maier and Brian Monahan, “How Close Is Too Close?”
36. Some publishers now demand to know whether respondents gave written permission for the interviews or field notes to be published, particularly if the respondents’ identities could be deduced by readers. As a result, consent forms should include an explicit statement that study participants are giving permission for the information to be published and that while every effort will be made to keep the information confidential, the participants understand that there is always the possibility that someone could recognize them in the publication.
37. Of course, persons portrayed in newspaper articles or, for that matter, on reality television, often are livid about those portrayals. Arlene N. Morgan, a dean at the Columbia School of Journalism, reported from her career as a reporter that it was “good common sense to meet with a person and give him or her a chance to write a letter to the editor or come in to meet with the editors in charge.” She adds, “Being more proactive to signal what is in a story is . . . [what] I would recommend. . . . Prepare and prepare some more and if it does not damage the story, think hard before you publish.” Personal communication, October 27, 2010. For the journalist code of ethics, see Gene Foreman, The Ethical Journalist. For an example of one family’s reactions to a reality show, see Jacques Steinberg, “One Show’s Unexpected Lessons in Reality.”
38. Participatory research is an exception. In that tradition, research participants are involved in each of these steps. See Whitehead and McNiff, Action Research, as well as, in a somewhat different vein, Binaya Subedi and Jeong-eun Rhee, “Negotiating Collaborating across Differences.” On the role of the researcher in conducting the research and reporting on it, see, among others, Maier and Monahan, “How Close Is Too Close?”; Cassell, “Risks and Benefits to Subjects of Fieldwork”; Katherine Irwin, “Into the Dark Heart of Ethnography”; Jack Katz, “On the Rhetoric and Politics of Ethnographic Method”; John Van Maanen, Tales of the Field. There are also many efforts to create new forms for the presentation of ethnography, including poetry and performance art. See Michal M. McCall and Howard S. Becker, “Performance Science”; Carl Bagley, “Educational Ethnography as Performance Art.”
39. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics, 2nd ed., pp. xviii, xvi–xvii.
40. Researchers seek to resolve this complex ethical dilemma in various ways. Duneier, for example, has allocated his royalties from Sidewalk to the men profiled in the book. But the actual amount is very modest, often less than $25 per man per year. In addition, introducing a payment after the research is over for work done earlier changes the relationship between a researcher and participants. In When a Heart Turns Rock Solid, Timothy Black directly labels ethnographic research as a form of exploitation. Compared to sociologists, anthropologists have a much richer literature on methodological dilemmas in fieldwork. See, for example, Paul Rabinow, Reflections on Doing Fieldwork in Morocco; Margery Wolf, A Thrice-Told Tale.
41. See Arlie Hochschild, The Second Shift. If I continue my research focus on the reproduction of inequality, then I would not want to give my own book to potential participants, since it would reveal too much about the research question of the study. However, given widespread internet access, it is likely that some potential research participants would do a search on my name; they are very likely to learn of my research interests that way. (Other researchers, though, could use Une
qual Childhoods as an example of a final product.)
42. It is important to remember that researchers and subjects not only have different interests in the final product, but they are engaged in different endeavors: study participants are living their lives; researchers are engaged in analysis.
43. This kind of dialog is not easy to achieve. It requires a willingness to listen to people’s highly critical and angry statements. Here the key is not to argue, or be defensive, or insist on explaining the original ideas. Rather, the goal is to listen very carefully to others’ statements, clearly conveying that you have heard not only their words but the emotions behind them. Acknowledging these respondents’ concerns word for word demonstrates that you have heard and understood their position. Then, by continuing to come back to visit, you confirm the sincerity of your concern about them and their feelings. I term this “staying in relationship with them” through the anger. It is quite difficult to do. But it is not impossible.
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