The field worker's fields

Ethics, Ethnography and Medical Sociology

Bibliographic Data

ID2265787
AuthorsRenee R Anspach (0000-0002-8270-3433, University of Michigan, corresponding author), N Mizrachi (0000-0002-9989-8169, Tel Aviv University)
Year2006
Volume28
Issue6
Pages713-731
Publication date2006-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociology of Health & Illness (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0141-9889 • E-ISSN: 1467-9566
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1467-9566.2006.00538.x
PMID17184414
OpenAlexW1489823900
LanguageEN
Citations received19
References cited26

Sociologists who do field work in medical settings face an intractable tension between their disciplinary field, which takes a critical perspective toward medicine, and their ethnographic field, which often includes physicians. This paper explores the ethical problems that result from the collision of the two fields. While in the field, ethnographers are forced to choose between sociology and their obligations to host members, as they decide whether to disclose their actual research agendas, whether to ask tough questions or to reveal their concerns, and whether to give advice. The tension persists when field workers leave the field to write, forcing them to choose between competing interpretations and to decide what to reveal or conceal in the interests of confidentiality.Through these moral choices about what to ask, record or present to the reader, ethnographers shape the academic field even as it shapes them

Confidentiality · Discipline · Engineering ethics · Epistemology · Ethnography · Face (sociological concept) · Field (mathematics) · Forcing (mathematics) · Perspective (graphical) · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology · Computer Science · Ethics in Clinical Research · Ethics in medical practice · Law · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics

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