Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Volume
Attthfopakgy of Work
which she does the field research, she is based in an institu- that supported me, I was not named as principal investigator
tion (e.g., colonial administration) different from the institu- on any of them—another of the political realities familiar to
tions in terms of which her informants' lives are structured. In anthropologists working in/on scientific settings.
either case, the anthropologist leaves her informants' commu- In addition to this shift, the issue of representation.il power
nity when the research is done to return to her own home also plays out differently in this new narrative. Far from being
society/institutions. unaware of how I represent their work in print, my informants
5. Traditional fieldwork is temporally bounded—the are highly interested in this question. Intelligent, highly-
fieldworker remains in the field for months or years and then trained people, many of them read what I write about them.
goes home. Sometimes they contest it. Whereas fieldworkers in the
6. The informants do work quite different in nature from traditional narrative may never encounter their informants'
that of the anthropologist. They may be farmers, fishermen, reactions to the way the anthropologist has represented them,
market women, whatever—traditional ethnographic fieldwork in the new narrative the anthropologist can hardly avoid such
has rarely taken place among people whose primary work reactions. Corporations routinely require fieldworkers to sign
skills are lecturing, reading, writing, and publishing academic non-disclosure agreements; they generally also want to vet
papers. written work before it can be presented or submitted for
7. Lacking local work skills, possibly language skills, and publication. While I have never had to sign such an agree-
the intention to stay for the long term, the fieldworker is ment in non-corporate settings, I find it advisable to show my
rarely a genuine participant in the practice she has come to paper drafts to key informants in order to get their feedback
observe. She remains largely a visitor, tolerated or indulged and to allow them to object to anything they might find
according to local circumstance. Sooner or later she goes potentially damaging. Fortunately, few objections have arisen,
away, back to the parallel universe of her own "real life" and but I think it would be folly not to check for that possibility.
career. 4. Like other American anthropologists, those who study
up are increasingly located outside of tenure-track jobs in
New Story academia. Within universities, many are supported on soft
Contrast the traditional fieldwork story with the way the money and/or in other departments; outside academia.
same themes play out when an American anthropologist anthropologists are finding positions in a range of agencies
studies up in the United States. I will refer to this as the and corporations. This means that we who study up are
"new" fieldwork narrative. increasingly paid from sources outside our own discipline;
1. Fieldwork takes place among people who may be from some of us are paid by the people we study.
a similar social, cultural, and class background to the anthro- Under these circumstances, fieldworkers investigate and
pologist. Field sites are often geographically and culturally critique elite institutions from a position of little or no job
close to home. In my own field, for example, the anthropol- security—a vulnerable stance from which to challenge the
ogy of science and technology, fieldwork may take place in powerful in one's own society. It is one thing to write
a building across the campus of one's own university or in a critically about events halfway round the world, or for a
local research institute, hospital, or corporation. In a complete tenured professor to publish critique of local power struc-
merging of "home" and "field", moreover, growing numbers tures. It is quite another for an anthropologist in a corporation
of anthropologists carry out field research in and on institu- or on soft money to call into question the practices of those
tions in which they are employed. For example, Xerox who employ her, and who may be in a position to affect her
Corporation, NYNEX, General Electric, and Apple Computer future ability to make a living. Where home and field are
have anthropologists on staff whose work includes carrying contiguous or even identical, there is no "elsewhere" for the
out in-house ethnographic work. In my own case, I was for fieldworker to return to.
a decade a paid researcher in a series of soft money labs 5. Fieldwork according to this new narrative may not be
involved in software production. Much of my time there was temporally bounded as strictly as more traditional fieldwork.
spent studying my own workplace. Indeed, it may have no endpoint at all. Anthropologists who
2. In this new set of circumstances, the social worlds of carry out research in/on the institutions in which they work
fieldworker and informants may overlap considerably. This do not necessarily go "away" when the research is finished.
has the effect of collapsing roles that remain separate in the For them, "home again" may mean back to their own office
traditional narrative: informants may also be faculty col- elsewhere in the same institution—or it may mean remaining
leagues, fellow employees, or indeed one's own employer. in the very same site.
3. This new state of affairs changes the power relations 6. In this new type of research, anthropologists find
between fieldworkers and informants. In contrast to the themselves studying people whose work and work skills are
traditional narrative, informants are not necessarily powerless quite similar to their own. Many of my informants in science
in relation to the fieldworker; on the contrary, they may have and technology are graduate students and people with Ph.D.'s
considerable power over her. That power may continue for whose daily work strongly resembles my own: we both use
years after the fieldwork ends. In my own case, some of my computers, do email, read journals, and write papers. Since
key informants for the past decade have been the computer medical informatics has intellectual concerns in common with
scientists and physicians who hired me and paid my salary. cultural and medical anthropology, there is a good deal of
While I wrote or contributed heavily to several of the grants overlap in what we read and write papers about. It is pre-
cisely such overlap in interests and work skills that makes it people in other societies sometimes publish abridged versions
possible for anthropologists to locate themselves for long of their reports in local languages for their informants'
periods of time in laboratories and corporate settings and to consumption (e.g., Laurence Wylie's edited French version of
produce knowledgeable critique of their practice. Village in the Vauc/usej.1 At the other extreme, those of us
7. Studying up in the United States offers the possibility who write about well-educated people in the United States
for at least some anthropologists to be much fuller partici- can be sure that our informants will be able to read every-
pants in events in the field site than is possible for many thing we publish. We can also be sure that they will not
fieldworkers under more traditional circumstances. This agree with everything we write.
possibility is promoted by fieldworkers' presumed possession Anthropologists take for granted that our accounts of
of excellent language skills, knowledge of and membership in people's lives are not necessarily identical with what those
the wider society, academic skills (useful in some settings, at people would write about themselves. This is especially likely
least), and by the fact that the fieldworker is not necessarily if one's accounts question their practice. However, this
constrained to go home again after a relatively short period relativist assumption is not widely shared in the broader
of time. society: unless our informants are relativists and/or people of
considerable tolerance, they may not make this assumption.
Practical Consequences of the New Narrative:
I work with people who are largely positivists; they tend to
Ethical and Political Dilemmas
believe that a point of view is either right or wrong, and that
I have outlined important changes in the nature of field the difference is a matter of evidence. Anthropological
research and of the conditions under which such work is evidence, however, is often dismissed as "anecdotal." People
carried out. As I pointed out, major role distinctions in the with whom I have worked in medical informatics have
traditional story may blur or break down altogether in the generally been able to accept what I write as simply my
new one, so that informants, funders, colleagues, employers, perspective, and to believe that it is at least intended to be
grant reviewers, and job referees sometimes turn out to be the helpful. However, others in that field (particularly people I
same individuals. Where they are not the same, they may be don't know well) sometimes see my writing as simply wrong;
members of the same professional communities—in my own in some cases they react to it with hostility. This can be
case, the small world of medical informatics. Similarly, the awkward politically, since some of these individuals have
meaning of "participant observer" may be quite different in been asked to comment upon my grant proposals, journal
the new narrative, as fieldworkers observe social processes in manuscripts, and applications for jobs and promotion.
which they are genuine and possibly paid participants. Much concern has been devoted to the privilege accorded
This blurring of roles and boundaries offers both benefits the anthropological voice and the difficulty of letting infor-
and costs to anthropology, its practitioners, and the people mants' voices be heard. Anthropologists who critique power-
we work with. On the positive side, relocating and redefining ful people tend to encounter the opposite problem. Our
fieldworkers and informants in relation to each other and informants have voices, and generally have no difficulty being
changing the nature of the "field" and "fieldwork" offer the heard. This is of course especially true of scientists and
possibility of deeper understanding of complex social and doctors. In contrast, it is often the anthropologist—frequently
technical processes. This in turn provides a more solid basis less powerful than her informants—who may have trouble
for critique and—to the extent that the anthropologist is also being heard. I sometimes wish for a bit of that epistemologi-
attempting to work for her informants—greater utility to them cal privilege as I try to persuade computer scientists and
as well. doctors to treat social and cultural meanings as more than
At the same time, ethnography under the changed "frosting on the cake."2
conditions I have laid out is bound to render fieldworker and Anthropologists who study up in their own society need to
informants more vulnerable to each other. Not only does the be aware of the following facts of life:
changed fieldwork context create new kinds of vulnerability, 1. If you publish things about powerful people that they do
but the risks to both anthropologist and informants may not agree with, they will not necessarily like it.
extend far beyond the fieldwork itself. 2. Unless they are people of great generosity—and there
Finally, studying up under the conditions of the new certainly are such people—they may not wish you to
narrative can create a host of personal and professional continue to write more of the same.
dilemmas for the anthropologist, as conflicting loyalties pull 3. This may affect your career.
her in opposite directions and the collapsed roles of partici- 4. It is especially likely to affect your career if you are a)
pant, observer, critic, employee, and colleague collide with untenured or not based in a university; and b) depen-
one another. I will illustrate this with four examples. I could dent upon the people you critiqued (or people like
cite many more. them) for employment, promotion, or research funding.
No one will be surprised by these facts of life. As they imply,
Informants Read and React to the Way We Represent Them however, anthropologists who study up in this country under
Anthropologists who study far-away people who do not the conditions of the new narrative are likely to be faced with
read are not likely to be faced with their reactions to the way some awkward trade-offs. In my own experience, it may not
they have been represented. Those who work with literate be possible to avoid at least some costs.
Volume m Numhtr I
AnthtQpahgy of Work
Should One Compete with One's Informants? if your informants want to use these data in their own
publications? What if they want to use data you collected in
Where role distinctions collapse, fieldworkers may find
ways that you feel to be ethically or intellectually problem-
that their various loyalties and obligations conflict in confus-
atic? This question has arisen in my own career, and has
ing and ethically troubling ways. As a participant observer
arisen as well for several colleagues who do similar research.
for several years each in a series of scientific laboratories, I
It arises in part as a consequence of the overlap between our
sometimes found it difficult to know how to balance my roles
work skills and those of our informants in science and
as fieldworker and lab researcher. One practical issue was the
technology studies, and often turns out to be difficult to
question of competition with my fellow lab members, who
resolve.
were both colleagues and informants.
My informants these days are largely scientists and physi-
Anthropologists have traditionally felt an obligation to
cians who, among other things, write and publish papers.
protect our informants' interests, or at least not to harm their
They are always on the lookout for data. In several work
interests through our work. As a participant observer in
settings, my informants realized that a fieldworker who
Scotland and Germany, I tried to help my informants to
collected data about them could also collect data about
achieve their own goals. On request, I taught people to drive,
others. Thus, I became a collaborator in projects in which my
baby-sat, played the organ in church, mucked out barns,
role included producing data about the "information needs"
corrected people's English, did translations, and so on. Such
of doctors and patients to support the design of intelligent
activities never seemed ethically problematic and never brought
systems for medical settings. When one joins a collaborative
my informants' interests into serious conflict with my own.
project, one presumably agrees to share data within certain
When studying laboratories that also employed me, parameters (and I heartily recommend that these be defined
however, the situation has been very different. One of the explicitly and in advance). In two of these labs, however, an
main goals of scientists and graduate students in laboratory issue arose that brought my anthropological assumptions
settings is access to limited resources; these include money, about data-sharing into conflict with those held by my
promotion, space, and the attention of people senior to informant-colleagues in other disciplines.
oneself. As fieldworker, I would wish to help my informants Anthropologists see observational data as the interpretive
to achieve such goals, or at least not to impede them. But as construction of the observer, and thus view data we collect
a fellow lab member, I sometimes found myself in direct as our own intellectual property. But in the positivist world of
competition with them. Students and researchers assigned to medical informatics, observational research is viewed as
carrels in loud, busy rooms wanted their own offices; I trivial: the straightforward collection of what is "out there."3
wanted an office, too. Lab members wanted the lab head to One physician described me in my observer role as "a
read and comment upon their papers; I wanted his attention, walking tape recorder." However, he saw lots of potential
too, for my own proposals and papers. And when I discov- uses for the data I produced, and without my permission
ered that I was being paid two-thirds of what a male scientist passed out to his medical fellows field transcripts I had
ten years my junior was making, I wanted a raise. produced for a project in which they were not involved. This
So what to do? On the one hand, where resources are created a dilemma for me. As fieldworker in his laboratory, I
tight, people who don't compete may find themselves without wanted to be pleasant and useful. Obviously, my field data
them. I needed resources to do the work for which I was provided just such utility: by enabling his fellows to avoid the
paid. On the other hand, overtly to compete with one's "trivial" but burdensome necessity of collecting empirical
informants carries the risk of jeopardizing the fieldwork. Are data, my transcripts enabled them to produce quick publica-
people likely to volunteer information about their work and tions.
personal lives that they fear might be used against them? On the other hand, in my participant role, I was competing
Furthermore, informants are actors as well as objects of the with those fellows. Having put in the time to collect and
anthropological gaze. A fieldworker may try to be a friend to interpret the data, I felt that it should not be given away
all, but what is one's ethical obligation in relation to infor- without my permission. This situation turned into a major
mants who start competing with you? In one lab, a senior struggle between two laboratory heads: my own lab head,
researcher started attacking me at lab meetings. Would I have with whom I had a mutually satisfactory agreement about
been justified in fighting back? Would it have been ethically data sharing; and the physician head of the other laboratory,
acceptable to fight back using information I knew from who was also the project PL In the end, he took us both to
interviewing him or others? Could I have done this and the university lawyers over this issue, who decided that the
continued to define myself as a field researcher in that PI could do anything he wanted with the data.
situation? I found this situation very difficult. When the This struggle involved a contradiction between two ways
participant and observer roles conflict in this way, the of viewing anthropological work. It also involved a trade-off
traditional fieldwork narrative offers little guidance. between my own professional interest in publishing from data
I had collected, and the political utility of supporting the
Who Owns Your Data? interests and assumptions of the PI. This no-win situation
A third concern brings up related issues of competition illustrates one of the dilemmas created by collapsing the
and power. Who owns the data you collect with funding from worlds of "home" and "field" kept separate in the traditional
your informants or from funding sources in their world? What narrative.
What Do We Owe Our Informants? is studying up, and as Nader has shown, this is important
work. It is high time for us to broaden our notions of what it
Finally, I want to raise the question of what we owe our
means to have a "real" career in anthropology.
informants when we publish critiques of their practice. Of
Studying up is not only important, it is also risky. As I have
particular concern is the possibility that what we write may
tried to show, to critique the practice of powerful people is
do them damage. After all, critique is presumably intended to
not only to risk ethical and political quandaries, it may also
change our informants' practice. One way or another it may
involve risks to one's own professional future. My own work
have that effect, in the extreme case by putting them out of
used to be funded by the medical informatics institute at Nil-B-
business. For some anthropological critics, that may indeed
arter publishing critiques, which they have seen, I am unlikely
be the point of the exercise (a goal that itself requires ethical
to be funded by them again. Those who study up need
discussion). For others, however, among whom I number
recognition and understanding from their own discipline.
myself, the point of critique is not to put our informants out
After sticking one's neck out to critique the powerful,
of business but rather to suggest alternative ways to achieve
particularly from an untenured position, one needs such
their own goals. What concerns me is that critique so
support.
intended may be read differently by others, and may be used
for purposes we do not intend. Studying up is also risky to our informants. I am troubled
by how cavalier some writers of ethnographic critique seem
I showed my papers to my former laboratory head before
to be about the personal and professional vulnerability of the
submitting them for publication. In the year since my depar-
people they study. In fairness, I should note that this com-
ture from his lab, I have continued this practice. So far, he
ment refers largely not to trained anthropologists but to
has expressed no objection to my critiques of practice in his
people from other disciplines in science and technology
own and related laboratories and has requested only a few
studies who undertake ethnography without also taking on
tiny changes of wording. While he comments that my papers
the associated philosophical and ethical stance (see Nyce &
make him feel "a bit uncomfortable," he insists that critique
Lowgren 1995). I have heard papers about scientists and
is good for the field and that they should be published.
consumers of science that could only be called informant-
However, I worry that some others in the field may see this
bashing. In my view, doing fieldwork involves an ethical
work as damaging. Both my informants and their competitors
obligation to treat our informants with respect, whether or not
can read what I write. Could my work create a cost to the
we share their point of view. We who investigate elite people
former of which they are unaware?
and agencies should remember that the possession of power
alone does not justify willful damage.
Discussion
At the same time, anthropology needs to come to terms
I have argued that in studying up in the U.S., the juxtapo- with the phenomenon of powerful informants who read and
sition of home and field, the movement of anthropologists to contest our representations of them. A well known anthropol-
bases outside academic anthropology, the changing nature of ogist of science was attacked in both the popular and the
funding, and the reversal in power relations all change the social science press when she published an excellent book
nature of fieldwork. I have suggested that these changes that analyzed her informants' work in terms they would not
increase the mutual vulnerability of anthropologists and have chosen themselves. If we really believe that anthropolo-
informants. They also create some new (or, in some cases, gists can validly have a very different perspective than our
new versions of old) moral and practical dilemmas for informants, then we need to reaffirm that point when mem-
fieldworkers. bers of the communities studied are asked to review anthro-
This is a work in progress: I am still thinking about what pological work about them. Furthermore, I suspect that those
would be useful and appropriate to say about such dilemmas, who study up experience a double standard. Anthropologists
and welcome feedback. Obviously, this is a highly reflexive of science and technology are often subject to the judgments
project. Not only do I attempt to turn the anthropological of their informants; for example, when I applied last year for
gaze upon the doing of anthropology itself; but my own an anthropology position at a university in California, several
fieldwork involves people with whom I have much in people from my latest lab were asked to write letters about
common. My comments of course reflect the particularities of me. In contrast, anthropologists who work in more traditional
my own experience of studying up in science and technol- field sites areas are not normally subject to review by their
ogy. informants. If such review is appropriate, then perhaps we
I offer several points for discussion. First, although should apply it more widely. If it is not, then I would urge
students continue to be taught the traditional narrative, it is caution in inviting elite, non-relativist informants to pass
obvious that a good deal of fieldwork these days no longer judgement on the publications, proposals, and unrelated job
fits this story. We need some new narratives. Second, there applications of anthropologists who study them.
has long been a tendency to treat anthropologists based A good deal has been written about the importance of
outside the academy and colleagues whose field is not distant accountability to our informants. Studying up—particularly
as not doing "real anthropology." This is unjust. What many from an untenured position—provides one with an opportu-
of these innovative and entrepreneurial colleagues are doing nity to encounter the reality of doing ethnographic research