21. At the time, The Oprah Winfrey Show featured a monthly discussion of a book selected by Oprah. The book Ms. Yanelli was referring to was Anna Karenina. Somewhat differently, one colleague told me that ethnography is not “wedding photography.” In retrospect, I think that indeed many of the families thought that the portrait would be similar to a written version of wedding photography, showing the family in the best possible light.
22. For example, throughout this process, I showed normal symptoms of being in a stressful situation, including having trouble sleeping.
23. I ran into the Yanellis in a store a few years later. They were warm and friendly; they looked happy. Billy now had his own apartment. “He even keeps it clean,” his mother marveled. He was working regularly. He was doing well. Mr. and Ms. Yanelli were delighted that their older son and his girlfriend had recently made them grandparents; they looked forward to spending time with the baby.
24. Burawoy, “Revisits,” p. 672.
25. It should be emphasized that not all study participants come away with negative feelings. Some report truly enjoying being in studies. Their involvement makes them feel special; they are excited by the prospect of being discussed in a book; and they draw comfort from being able to talk about private concerns with a nonjudgmental listener. Similarly, despite the very real and painful costs that participation in ethnographic studies can exact from individuals, these costs are surely less than are incurred in other spheres. In medical research, needy individuals in the control group cannot benefit from an experimental drug until after the clinical trial has ended and the drug has been approved. In a recent case of two cousins participating in the same medical study, one died waiting for the treatment to be approved. See Harmon, “Target Cancer.”
26. My experience leads me to urge that the costs of being a study participant be explicitly acknowledged prior to the beginning of a research project. They could be covered in the consent form, under a statement such as “the research could make you uncomfortable” or “the conclusions of the research report may not match your understanding of your life.”
27. See Vidich and Bensman, Small Town in Mass Society, particularly the Afterword with its description of the negative reaction of the community, including his being hung in effigy. Similarly, in the introduction to a special issue assessing Street Corner Society, Peter Adler and the other editors report that “virtually all of Cornerville felt hurt by the publication of Street Corner Society” in 1943 (p. 5). William Lloyd Warner, who studied “Yankee City” (Newburyport, Mass.) in 1949 was famously mocked by John Phillips Marquand through the character of Malcolm Bryant in Marquand’s novel Point of No Return. Studies have also been critically assessed decades later; see W. A. Marianne Boelen, “Street Corner Society,” and the vigorous defense of Whyte by Angelo Ralph Orlandella, “Boelen May Know Holland . . .”
28. See Ellis, “Emotional and Ethical Quagmires”; Stein, “Sex, Truths, and Audiotape”; Scheper-Hughes, “Ire in Ireland.”
29. See, for example, the extensive literature on action research or advocacy research. This tradition has a more extensive following in the field of education than in sociology, although there are advocates in sociology as well. See Jack Whitehead and Jean McNiff, Action Research. Some researchers, including Nancy Scheper-Hughes, have called for avoiding the use of pseudonyms.
30. For example, Mitchell Duneier, in the appendix to his book Sidewalk, provides a comical description of his (vain) efforts to gain the attention and approval of the Greenwich Village street vendors he studied as he read aloud sections of the draft that involved them.
31. Some researchers have sought to resolve these questions by more directly privileging the voices of the respondents. Publishing portions of an unedited interview transcript is one approach. Others provide an analysis, but see a primary purpose of the piece as an opportunity to tell the stories of underrepresented groups. See, among others, Eddah Mutua Kombo, “Their Words, Actions, and Meaning.” Still, it was the researcher, not the respondent, who conceptualized the study, decided what questions to ask, and edited (most of) the transcript for publication. This also does not address the issue of the researcher’s career advancement. If a researcher genuinely shares control of the writing with respondents, then it will be harder to comply with the criteria for publication in peer-reviewed journals. Some ethnographers have retreated into the study of themselves, creating the subfield of autoethnography. See Carolyn Ellis and Arthur P. Bochner, “Analyzing Analytic Autoethnography.” Others have engaged in community-based research. Alisa Lincoln reported, for example, a study where an ethnographer co-authored a piece with eighteen clients who had a major mental illness. The piece could not be published until every single co-author signed off. In some cases, the refusal of clients to approve a publication could harm a young scholar’s career (personal communication, January 27, 2011). See also Lassiter, Collaborative Ethnography.
32. Hugh Mehan commented, “I have been in similar situations—trying to depict events honestly while at the same time trying to ensure that the voices of the participants are rendered accurately. For our book [Mehan et al.,] Constructing School Success, I had promised the AVID folks access to the [manuscript] before publication. The AVID director reacted extremely negatively about certain points—which led to a succession of Friday afternoon sessions going over portions of the ms that she found offensive. We discussed. We argued. We settled on changes—ones that were not so volatile, but did not alter the argument. I made some acknowledgement of that situation in introductory material” (personal communication, August 31, 2009). Tim Black followed a similar approach for his book, When a Heart Turns Rock Solid. In a talk on his research on community organizers (which does not use pseudonyms), Mark Warren emphasizes the importance of building collaborative relationships with the groups he studies. This is not always easy, and sometimes the process of recruiting organizations to the study can be seen as “seduction” and the sharing of the results, especially when the results expose problems, as “betrayal.” He describes the interactions as “hot and heavy” with one organization, though it was much less contentious with other organizations. As he wrote, “Even in the more contentious cases, the team worked hard to reach some consensus on what was acceptable.” Personal communication, October 31, 2010. See Warren, “A Collaborative Approach to Ethnographic Case Study Research.”
33. See Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández’s Best of the Best for a thoughtful account of the experience of privilege in an elite boarding school. Gaztambide-Fernández offers insight regarding the experience of students, but his work contains little about the foibles, missteps, or inadequacies of the institution. He reports that was not deliberate, but rather “it reflects the fact that the book is not about the school itself, but about how the students construct elite identifications. I wanted to understand what the school does best: convince students that they are ‘the best of the best.’” Personal communication, October 17, 2010.
34. As I have already explained, the Yanellis and I did repair our relationship. I doubt that would have been possible, however, if I had published the gist of the analysis after knowing their objections. I continue to send holiday cards to Billy, as well as to the other young adults and families that wish to remain in touch with me (and for whom I have addresses). I now send food or tuck a somewhat larger bill ($20) into the envelope; and, if the young adults have children, I send gift cards from a store such as Target for them.