Conducting Open Participant Observations of Bouncers - Negotiating (In)visibility in Fieldwork
| Author | Christine Preiser |
Introduction
What should you do if your code of ethics requires you to keep your participants from unforeseen consequences due to your research,18* while public and academic discourse tell you that your field - nightclub bouncers - is a field full of risks? Similarly, what is the correct approach when important publications within that and related fields suggest that you must put yourself at risk in order to gain valuable insights (Ferrell & Hamm, 1998; Calvey, 2000; Westmarland, 2000; Winlow et al., 2001; Marks, 2004), while others remind you to take your own risks into account (Scarce, 1994) and exercise caution? In such circumstances the task at hand becomes one of negotiating various interests and the logics of the work - on site, at the desk, and in publications.
My doctoral research involved 60 nights of participant observation with bouncers working at three nightclubs in two German cities. I experienced the action-packed side of the night-time economy - and the boredom of endless hours outside these places of amusement. I wrote 500 pages of fieldnotes. Yet arguably the tensions inherent in the work are at their starkest now, as I reflect on the experience of my research subjects and seek to reap the fruits of my labour through the process of publishing. Two antagonistic logics have to be balanced during this process. On the one hand are the interests of the bouncers who allowed me to access to their night shifts but sometimes found themselves conflicting with the law and, so, understandably wished to stay invisible. On the other hand, it is the logic of ethnography to make the invisible visible, and to reveal what is otherwise hidden. It is the nature of our system of research ethics to reduce potential harm for research participants as much as possible - a tool, a filter or a logic gate which helps us negotiate these antagonistic logics. The result of this negotiation is therefore an inevitably partial representation that focuses on some aspects of experience whilst leaving others out; in other words, we are left with a balance of (in)visibility.
This article aims to provide a series of insights into the process involved in creating this balance. Although there is a vivid body of literature on doing ethnography (e.g. Hammersley & Atkinson, 1983; Ferrell & Hamm, 1998; Pawluch et al., 2005; Fetterman, 1989) and on writing ethnographic works (e.g. Clifford & Marcus, 1986; van Maanen, 1988; Emerson et al., 2011), the literature tends to be particularly silent on the interplay between the field under study and the collected data that provide the basis for further analysis and the final representation of the subjects of the ethnography. Thus, the ethnographic process of making the invisible visible tends to stay largely invisible itself. In what follows, the focus will be on the actual process of doing research, and the piece will seek to communicate concrete aspects of my own ethnographic practice. Three sections will follow. In the first, the focus will be on the themes of ‘risks’ and ‘(in)visibility’, and how they are interconnected throughout the entire research process, from the initial forays into fieldwork right through to the publication of results. It will be argued that the interplay between risk and (in)visibility hinges on two basic prerequisites: the need for discretion and the need for trust. The second section will explore how the dimensions of openness, discretion and participation are interconnected at the actual physical site of the ethnography. The final section will show how some of the tensions apparent in the field are recreated and played out within the fieldnotes that are taken. Fieldnotes are often used as illustrative depictions of research, but it is important to ask what is absent from them, and why. Ultimately, the article will show how an individual ‘entering the field’ of research dealt with the challenge of balancing a number of competing logics in the process of ethnography. Furthermore, it will suggest that ethnographic data by its very nature is incomplete, but that in certain cases it is actually desirable for this to be the case. This is because participants will only agree to take part in such studies and develop the trust in the researcher necessary for a successful project if they know that not everything will be revealed. Ultimately, the central balancing act in research of this nature concerns what is revealed and what remains hidden.
Becoming familiar with the logics of the field
At the outset of the research, I was inspired by the literature on methodology and the night-time economy, and a particular set of ethnographic studies that had greatly enthused me (e.g. Simon, 1991; Barley, 2000; Wacquant, 2004; Fassin, 2013). I also had the advice of my supervisors and the code of ethics of the German Association of Sociology to heed. I took the early decision to conduct overt participant observations. This was rooted in pragmatism, as there are only a small number of nightclubs of a very particular type that employ female bouncers, which would have limited my chances of success had I decided to research covertly.19* Employment of a different nature (such as in Rivera, 2010) in nightclubs would have been at the cost of social and spatial proximity to the bouncers. The decision to research overtly also had an ethical dimension, since the code of ethics under which I worked requires explicit informed consent if possible.
Some researchers have stressed that carrying out participant observations when embedded within bouncer communities is a risky endeavour (Calvey, 2000; Winlow et al., 2001; Monaghan, 2002; Sanders, 2005; Rigakos, 2008). Meanwhile others seem barely concerned at all with this issue (Rivera, 2010; Søgaard, 2013; van Liempt & van Aalst, 2016). Despite this difference, the research draws attention to an archetypal bouncer: a 20-45 year old male, hailing from various socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds, with a certain penchant towards using violence which they are given the opportunity to do through their occupation. The prominence of violence in the existing literature is enough to make one quite intimidated.
The manner in which researchers have legitimated their decision to engage in covert participant observations (Calvey, 2000; Winlow et al., 2001; Monaghan, 2002) is perfectly coherent, and yet I have always wondered how these researchers came to the basic assumption that bouncers were a group that would be inaccessible with overt participant observations. With the sense that my way into the field would yield initial insights into its basic logics (Breidenstein et al., 2013) I decided to challenge this assumption. In short, I simply knocked at the doors of three nightclubs and was not rejected at any. Initially, I picked a random nightclub on a random night to have a try. As it turned out, the first bouncer I talked to was not only the head bouncer but also a sociologist.20* Three months later I began my participant observations at that nightclub. I gained access to the second and third nightclubs through bouncers who connected me to the respective teams with a positive recommendation. What was particularly surprising was that I was permitted access to the second nightclub, as I knew that some of the bouncers working at that venue were also local gang members. Even in this case, and despite the perceived risks of the work, it still proved readily possible to gain informed consent in all three nightclubs.
Each of the nightclubs were quite different from one other, but during preliminary discussions and negotiations regarding the research the potential risks were of paramount concern in all three venues. Of particular concern was my risk of receiving an injury and their risk of being held accountable for it. In addition, the venues and the bouncers were concerned that my data might be used against them by third parties, mainly the police. Together, we clarified that they would not be held accountable for my risks and we agreed that I would be prohibited from taking pictures, making videos or tape-recording anything. This went for all three teams, who were all happy for me to take pseudonymised fieldnotes.
Despite this basic agreement, each of the teams had quite different approaches in dealing with their risks with regards to the research. The bouncers in nightclub #1 requested an official letter of informed consent. I offered the same to the bouncers of nightclub #2 and #3 - they laughed fairly hard at me. It was more relevant for them that somebody they trusted vouched for me. Each club employed its own methods of acknowledging risk and ensuring that I was not tempted to cross certain boundaries. For example, the head bouncer of nightclub #2 told me several...
To continue reading
Request your trial