Navigating Fieldwork in the Social Sciences: Stories of Danger, Risk and Reward

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Foreword Acknowledgements Contents Notes on Contributors 1: Collecting Stories Why Risk? But What Is Risk, and How Is It Conceived? Getting the Stories Presenting the Stories The Structure References 2: Sex in the Academy/Sex in the Field: Bodies of Ethics in Activist Research What Does the ‘Field’ Mean to You? What Approaches Do You Use? And What Kinds of Spaces Did You Do Your Fieldwork In? What’s It Like for You There? Were There Legal Risks That Came with the Ethnography or Interviews? What Kind of Things Were You Worried About Going into the Research? What Came to Fruition and Was It Expected or Unexpected? Has Anything Like That Happened to You? Did You Feel Like There Was Institutional Support, and What Gets You Through That? How Do You Deal with the Emotional Outcomes? How Do You Balance Those Multiple Roles as Sex Worker, Activist and Researcher? You Have So Many Things to Juggle! Do You Ever Sleep? What Is the Role of a Researcher, Given Your Concerns About How Knowledge Is Produced and Whose Voices Are Represented? What Are Some of the Challenges of Insider Research in Porn Studies, Being Part of the Communities You Are Studying? As a Lawyer and a Sex Worker, You Have Had Different Kinds of Contact with the Criminal Justice System, How Has That Affected Your Research and Your Fieldwork? How Did You Learn About All These Strategies That You Have Implemented? It’s Clear That Your Research Is Underpinned and Guided by a Body of Ethics That Is Not Located in the Formal, Bureaucratic Ethics Process. You Have Also Mentioned a Number of Key Figures That You Have Learnt from Along the Way. Why Is This So Importa What Do You Wish Somebody Had Told You Before You Started Doing the Research That You’ve Done? And What Would You Like to See More Of? References 3: Sitting with the Mess How Do I Manage Blurred Boundaries? How Do I Deal with Trauma in Research? How Do I Recruit Participants? What Insider/Outsider Identities Do I Bring to Research? What Are the Risks of (Mis)representing? What Stories Do I Choose to Tell? What Are My Strategies for Self-Care and Support? What Is the Role of Institutional Ethics? How Do I Apply Ethics in the Real World? How Do We Trust Ourselves? What Do I Recommend? Sitting with the Mess References 4: Fear and Loathing in the Cross: Researching the Policing of Nightlife in Sydney So, Tell Us a Bit About Your Fieldwork and the Research You Have Done? Given Your Research, What Are Some of the Difficulties or Complexities That Come with Your Work? So, First Day in the Field! What Does It Entail? What Impact Did That Have on You Emotionally? So How Did You Gain Access? What Did You Do? You Mentioned Other Access Techniques? Also, Did You Tell the People You Were Engaging with About What You Were Doing? You Mentioned Role Playing, Can You Tell Me a Little More About That? What Do You Mean? How Do You Respond? Did You Call This Out? What About Other Risks? So, the Formal Ethics Requirements Can Cause Issues? What Other Issues Did You Come Up Against? What About Risks to Others You Have Done Research with, Maybe from Some of Your Other Projects? What About When You Are Writing Up Your Fieldwork? So How Do You Deal with That? So, What Would You Tell a Student or Someone Else Going Out to Do Fieldwork? References 5: Doing Critical Drugs Research: From Deconstructing to Encountering Risk in the Field What Types of Research Have You Done in the Field? Tell Us About Those Methods and the Impact They Had on Your Research? Can You Tell Us a Little More About the Risks in Your Field? Can You Tell Us About Cold Calling and the Challenges It Presents? Can You Tell Us About Partnering with a Service? How Is It Different to the More Street-Based Work? How Did That Make You Feel? What About the Research You Have Done Using Online Advertisement? Is That Different Again? What Are the Ethics of Doing This Type of Research? Have You Had Any Challenges with Ethics? How Do You Deal with Trauma in the Field? What Role Does Being ‘Critical’ Play in Your Fieldwork? Any Final Thoughts? What Would You Tell Others Looking to Do Fieldwork? References 6: ‘I Hope Little Worms Die in Your Arse’: Fieldwork, Anarchists, Fascists and Academic Snitches Can You Just Start Off by Giving Us a Bit of Background About the Field Research That You’ve Undertaken? How Did You Get Access? Was It Difficult? Is There a Line for You? How Far Are You Willing to Go to Get Your Story? How Much Risk Are You Willing to Take? What Kind of Strategies? What Happened When You Got Home? What Other Issues Did You Have to Deal With? Can You Explain the Buddy System? Was That Planned? The Map, the Book? All of This Must Have Been Quite Emotional, How Did You Deal with That? Was This the Most Difficult Thing to Deal With? This Troubles You a Lot? You’ve Done This Political Research, or It Has a Political Edge to It. Are You Worried About Threats to Your Personal Safety? What Advice Would You Give Your Younger Research Self, to Deal with Risk or to Make the Research Experience Less Potentially Hazardous for Yourself? References 7: Doing Elite Interviews in Feminist Research: Confessions of a Born-Again Observationist Can You Tell Us a Little Bit About the Type of Research You’ve Done and About Some of the Field Experiences You’ve Had? What Challenges Have You Encountered with Formal Ethics Processes? What Sort of Things Do You Put in Place, What Strategies Do You Have to Attend to Ethical Concerns About Protecting Subjects? What’s One of the Most Important Issues in Terms of Getting Good Interview Material? What Do They Trust You About Though? Your Integrity? What Are You Concerned About in Research in Regard to Risk to the Participant? What Is the Value of Elite Level Interviews? Have There Ever Been Situations Where You Knew Your Work Was Perceived as a Threat? And Have You Had Any Adverse Responses to Your Research and How Have You Managed That? Had She Responded in Time, Would You Have Responded in Full to Her Concerns Within Your Text? How Do You Engage with Concerns About Your Personal Safety, Mental Health and Concerns About the Consequences of the Dissemination of Your Information? What Strategies Have You Put in Place for When You Are Dealing with Heavier Texts or What Specific Things Did You Wish You Had Set Up with Your PhD Student? Can You Talk Us Through the Mechanics of a Debrief Session? Are There Any Other People Who Are Involved in Your Life That Your Work Might Cause a Risk to, for Some It’s Family, Colleagues or Others, Does That Apply to You? What About with Your Media Work, Do You Get Pushback Going Through Some of Your Commentary in the Media? Are You Ready? Could You Reflect on the Younger You, or Think About Giving Advice to a PhD Student, Someone Who’s Not Really That Used to Fieldwork, What’s the Thing You Wish You Knew When You Were Getting Started? References 8: Risking the Self: Vulnerability and Its Uses in Research Emotional Risk and Risking Self/What Do We Risk? Risking Others/Who Bears the Risk? How Do We Reduce the Risk of Getting It Wrong? How Do We Do Research Better, Even If It Is Also Riskier? References 9: Enter the Dragon: Coming of Age as Blond, White, Female Researcher in Fragile Contexts Tell Us More About Your Research. What Was It About and Who Did You Interview? How Did You Cope with Challenging Interviews/Interviewing Difficult People? What Was Collaboration with Local Partners Like? Can You Say a Bit More About Your Experience as a Female Researcher in Such Contexts? So How Risky Was Research in Afghanistan, More Generally and for a Woman? Did You Do Anything Special to Mitigate These Personal Risks? Can You Say a Bit More About the Role of Your Local Colleagues? Can You Say a Bit More About Becoming a Risk for Your Colleagues? How Did You Adjust Your Research Because of Insecurity? What Were the Risks to Knowledge Production in Such a Militarised and Polarised Context? What Did You Do to Take Care of Yourself in Such a Stressful Context? Based on Your Experience, What Would You Advise Future Researchers? References 10: ‘If You Want to Know About Evil, Ask the Devil’: Research in Post-conflict Countries Can You Give Us Some Background to Your Research? Were There Common Experiences Across Settings? What Did You Learn from This Work? I Imagine Knowledge of Language Was Very Important in All This? Did You Use Translators? This Sounds Complicated, What Other Issues Affected Your Work? How Did You Find the Right Teams to Do the Work? How Did You Recruit People for the Community Interviews? Were There Times Where All This Went Astray? What Did You Try? Did It Work? Can You Tell Us About That? What About Risk to Your Colleagues? This Must Have Been Really Stressful. What Strategies Did You Develop Day to Day to Take Care of Yourself, to Reduce That Stress? You Mentioned You Worked Without Ethical Approval of Any Kind? How Did This Work and What Do You Think of the Transition to University Ethical Processes? What Would You Tell People Going into These Places, What Would a Key Lesson Be? 11: Sharing Stories References Index