What I found really fascinating in the White-Knuckle Research piece was how the rituals and tropes of rapport building fall apart when it comes to research on individuals and communities with outrageous or repugnant views. Is it possible to establish trust without establishing a common ground? What does trust even look like in the context of that relationship?

Writing on the Margins raised good points about gatekeepers and whether limiting access is a tool for protecting vulnerable individuals or a means of marginalizing them further. These questions were particularly interesting given our previous conversations on privilege. Research affords privileged access to people and information – a license to move in and out of lives, to ask personal —even impertinent — questions. What do we owe in return for that privilege?

 

As exasperated as the Diversi and Finley article left me, I do think the questions of privilege and positionality the authors raised are so critically important. A journalist whose work I really respect and who takes sort of an enthographic approach in her reporting is Adrienne Nicole LeBlanc. For her book, “Random Family,” she spent a decade documenting the lives of the girlfriends of three New York drug dealers. In interviews, LeBlanc has described a conversation with one of the young women in which the teen explained that she continued to wash her boyfriend’s clothes even while he was living with someone else. LeBlanc assumed the arrangement was demeaning. But, to the young woman, it was an expression of her power and predominance. She was claiming territory. We don’t have to accept that perspective uncritically, but we should respect that the young woman has as much a right as we do to interpret the facts of her life on her own terms.

I was reminded again of my series on Cynthia, a former foster youth and gang-affiliated mother. So often such stories are driven by a “beating the odds” narrative. Reporters look to social workers, case managers, and researchers as the “experts” on the subject. The experiences of the youths themselves are treated as mere anecdote. I’m guilty of these transgressions, but in approaching Cynthia’s story, I very much wanted her to be the ultimate authority on her life. I’m proud of that. But here’s where my work becomes ethically impeachable, where I didn’t think carefully enough about privilege: I followed Cynthia around for several years, and by the time I was wrapping up my reporting, I was pregnant with my first child. In a newly intense way, I was developing opinions on what good mothering “looks” like, and I wonder now how that shaded my impressions of Cynthia’s interaction with her own children. I wonder too if I was too quick to accept as credible CPS reports detailing alleged neglect. As a light-skinned, college-educated Latina woman, my parenting receives far less institutional scrutiny than that of Cynthia, a darker-skinned Latina who did not finish high school and who grew up in foster homes, group homes and shelters. Several of the CPS referrals in her file mentioned diaper rash, for example. I will never have to answer for diaper rash.

Considering the IRB process a bit further this week made me wonder about the norms of confidentiality and anonymity in research and how they came to be. Anonymity in particular seems almost fundamentally at odds with the principle of informed consent. It seems to me that, as researchers, we’re likelier to overestimate our ability to cloak private identities than otherwise, so perhaps it would be more forthcoming to start with a presumption that anonymity can’t be guaranteed (though it could still be earnestly attempted)? I understand, of course, that this would make some types of research difficult if not nearly impossible to pursue, and that’s a consideration. I am also taking for granted that a participant who agreed to be identified would understand all the implications of publicity. That’s problematic too.

I guess my interest in these questions is driven by the fact is a place where the standards of journalism and research differ most dramatically.