Dangerous Fieldwork

99 Pages·1994·9.949 MB·English

by  Raymond M. Lee

DANGEROUS
FIELDWORK
RAYMOND M. LEE
Royal Holloway University of London
Qualitative Research Methods
Volume 34
SAGE PUBLICATIONS
International Educariorial and Professional Publisher
Thousand Oaks London New Delhi
Copyright 0 1995 by Sage Publications, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lee, Raymond M.
Dangerous fieldwork I Raymond M. Lee.
p. cm. - (Qualitative research methods; v. 34)
Includes bibliographical references.
-
ISBN 0-8039-5660-6 (~1). ISBN 0-8039-5661-4 (pb)
1. Ethnology-Fieldwork. 2. Ethnologists-Social conditions.
3. Ethnologists-Psychology. 4. Ethnologists-Health and hygiene.
I. Title. 11. Series
GN346.L44 1995
305.84~20 94-33266
95 96 97 98 99 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Sage Project Editor: Susan McElroy
To Tom McGlew

CONTENTS
vii
Series Editors’ Introduction
Acknowledgments ix
1. Introduction 1
Danger and Willingness to Research 5
Accidents, Illness, and h4ental Distress 10
2. Research on Violent Social Conflict 14
Access 16
Gatekeepers and Conflict 20
Insiders and Outsiders 22
Personal Safety 27
Simulation Methods 29
Ethnography and Espionage 31
Mishaps 34
Research and Counterinsurgency 35
Research Disutilization 37
3. Drug-Related Violence 39
Sponsors 42
Safety Zones 44
Relations With the Police 47
4. Gangs and Outlaws 48
5. Occupational Hazards 52
6. Sexual Harassment and Assault 56
7. Involuntary Research 61
8. Reducing Risk 63
Safety Awareness 64
Funding 66
Policy Issues 67
Field-Staffed Organizations 69
Training 72
9. Conclusion 73
References 77
About the Author 86
SERIES EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION
Fieldworkers are often quick to deny, qualify, or dismiss any “Indiana
Jones” or danger-seeking imagery that others may attribute to their
trade. Yet, romantic disclaimers aside, a good number of field studies
in both sociology and anthropology place even the most timid and
retiring of fieldworkers in settings and situations that are potentially
dangerous to their health and safety. Any list of potential dangers is
likely to be lengthy, but a short list would surely include the hazards of
assault, rape, and robbery; the risks of infection, accident, and disease;
the possibilities of arrest, harassment, verbal abuse, and violent con-
frontation. To stay out of harm’s way requires caution, of course, but
caution is a matter that rests in part on the cultural knowledge about
how and where danger is likely to arise in particular social situations.
Since such knowledge is an aim rather than a resource for fieldworkers,
understanding and thus minimizing the risky elements of the trade is an
emergent, unpredictable, and setting-specific matter.
Nevertheless, a good deal of wisdom and lore is passed back and forth
among social researchers as to how best to cope with both the ambient
and the situational dangers experienced in the field. Little of it is
formalized, however, and most of it is exchanged through the confes-
sional accounts, corridor talks, and war stories that animate a given
research community. This ongoing cautionary conversation about how
danger is managed (or mismanaged) in the field is marked by a curious
mix of sound advice, media-influenced exaggeration, fatalistic gloss-
ings, and engaging tales of living dangerously-but safely-behind the
lurk lines of conflict, violence, and duress.
Raymond Lee, in this 34th volume of the Sage Qualitative Research
Methods Series, is out to influence and perhaps alter this conversation.
Dangerous Fieldwork is a careful yet compact treatment of the risks of
social research, as carried out in situations that are, on the surface,
anything but researcher-friendly. Drawing on his own experience in
Northern Ireland, as well as on numerous reports from other high-risk
locales, the author documents and compares the personal dangers facing
fieldworkers across a wide band of investigatory domains. His purpose
is not simply to catalogue the risks, but to offer some well-grounded
advice as to what fieldworkers (and their advisors) can do to reduce such
risks. In the end, risk will remain a part of the game if fieldworkers are
not to shy away from potentially hazardous duty. But, as Dangerous
vii
viii
Fieldwork makes clear, courage in the face of danger is justifiable only
when prudence is finely honed.
-John Van Maanen
Peter K. Manning
Marc L. Miller
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Nigel Fielding and Claire Renzetti for helpful
comments on the first draft of this book. Robert Power was also kind
enough to share with me his extensive knowledge of the problems
involved in studying drug subcultures; and I am grateful, too, to Michael
Fischer for conversations about the dangers involved in anthropological
fieldwork. A number of people provided specific information about a
variety of topics. I am indebted to Neal Grenley for advice about health
and safety legislation in the United States, and to Patricia Mariani for
information on the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Act. I would
like to thank Anne Corden. Patricia Ellis at the Institute of Social
Research at the University of Michigan, and Cynthia Taeuber of the
U.S. Bureau of the Census, all of whom provided information about
safety guidelines in research organizations. and Jan Wathey of the
Postgraduate Training Board of the Economic and Social Research
Council, for information about the Board’s current policy on safety
issues. A final word of thanks goes to John Van Maanen for his helpful
and constructive editorial support.
ix