"Whales Tales, Dog Piles, and Beer Goggles" Redux: An Exploration of Ethnographic Ethics

• In Event: Ethnography and Public Scholarship: Ethical Obligations, Tensions, and Opportunities

Abstract

Objectives

The paper includes three objectives: first, to explore controversies surrounding the author’s experiences conducting and publishing an ethnographic study; second, to explore the controversies in relation to ethical discussions about Goffman’s (2014) On the Run; and third, to raise complex ethical considerations that render ethnographic work so challenging, but also so compelling.

Perspective

In the 1990s, I conducted an ethnographic study of a fraternity (citation removed). In the sociological study, I alluded to a variety of ethical conflicts that had arisen; I also indicated that someday I might want to revisit them. In light of recent controversies surrounding Alice Goffman’s (2014) dissertation work, eventually published as On the Run, now seems like an appropriate time to revisit the ethical tensions and implications of ethnography.

Methodology and Data Sources

The ethnographic case study included semi-structured interviews, informal interviews, and extensive participant observation involving fraternity activities and social events. I utilized critical theory to analyze the ways in which fraternity norms, values, rituals, and practices revealed insight about the deployment of power. The article’s key findings focused on the ways in which the fraternity brothers structured the engagement of college women in ways that served to disempower them, including the following: first, advancing hostile representations of women; second, positioning women as passive participants; and third, embracing limited conceptions of gender. The latter finding involved promoting a limited view of masculinity incorporating homophobic expressions as well.

Findings and Significance

When the work was first published, controversy ensued as members of the fraternity and an influential member of the university’s Board of Trustees (a Greek Life supporter) sought to censor my thesis. Data for the project had been collected with Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval. Nonetheless, the thesis was reviewed again by the IRB to determine whether the study had in fact followed the original proposal. The IRB director (a biologist) ruled that the original proposal had promised a cultural study of fraternity life and that what was captured by the thesis was not a cultural study. This was an error on the part of the IRB and was later appealed and overturned (through a rather informal process). It was also determined that one sentence in the thesis needed to be changed as it gave away too much identifying information about a key member of the fraternity. Although I disagreed with this finding, given that I had disguised both the university where the study was conducted and the fraternity, I agreed to make the change as a matter of compromise and to finally resolve the matter. The sociology department agreed to pay for the costs of reproducing the thesis.

Like Goffman’s (2014) On the Run, my experiences revealed numerous ethical dilemmas. Although over two decades have passed, a number of issues have reappeared—e.g., questions about the legitimacy of the research as well as protections for participants. The paper explores past and current discussions regarding ethical controversies in an effort to better understand ethnography now and in the future.

Author

• Robert A. Rhoads, University of California - Los Angeles