Covert Research in Social Science
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The document discusses the complexities and ethical considerations surrounding covert research in social science, particularly focusing on the practice of ethnography in contexts like the night-time economy. It highlights the contradictions between professional governance requirements and the realities of conducting covert research, while also reflecting on the personal experiences of a researcher who worked undercover as a bouncer. The paper advocates for a creative and nuanced approach to ethnography, suggesting that the social sciences may benefit from more diverse and reflective methodologies.
Covert Research in Social Science
- 1. ‘Covert research in Social Science: A creative pariah’ PAHC, MMU, 30/10/19
- 2. Contents 1) Societal context 2) Professional governance 3) Submerged covert tradition 4) Bouncers in the night-time economy 5) Reflections from my covert passing as a bouncer 6) A revival in covert research 7) Creative ethnography 8) Some conclusions References
- 3. 1) Societal context Contradictory themes of protectionism (Data Protection/Human Rights Acts) Voyeurism (public appetite, popular culture passing)-voyeur nation (Calvert, 2000) Populist investigative journalism (expose work e.g. The Secret Policeman, Daly, 2003; The Undercover Soldier, Sharp, 2008, Gomorrah- Saviano, 2006) Practitioner work (untroubled surveillance) Normalization and saturation of cyber lurking and surveillance in modern social media
- 4. 2) Professional governance Ethical bureaucratization and regimentation (reviews, committees, audit trials) Professional Governance requirement for social research to be more accountable and transparent Doctrine of informed consent (hyper sensitivity, research mantra)
- 5. Professional codes, associations and obligations Charters from various bodies-BSA (British Sociological Association), ISA (International Sociological Association), SRA (Social Research Association), ASA (Association of Social Anthropologists), ASA (American Sociological Association), British Society of Criminology (BSC) Frowning up covert research/last resort methodology as a form of deliberate deception and ethical transgression causing harm (inflated risk and danger discourse) Paradoxical fear and fascination with covert research
- 6. 3) Submerged covert tradition -sex work (Cressey, 1932) -religious cults (Festinger, 1956) -management culture and bureaucratic dysfunctionality (Dalton, 1959) -asylums, (Goffman, 1961-Bly, 1899)* -pain experiments (Milgram, 1963) * -sexual deviance (Humphrey,1970) * -pseudo-patients (Rosenhan, 1973) * -juvenile gangs (Patrick, 1973 and Parker, 1974) -workplace pilfering (Ditton, 1977) -police force (Holdaway, 1982) -legal work (Pierce, 1995) -bouncers (Hobbs et al, 2003) -football hooliganism (Pearson, 2008) -organ trafficking (Scheper-Hughes, 2004) -hospitality industry (Lugosi, 2006) -management training (Smith, 2007) -lap dancing (Colosi, 2010) -call centre (Woodcock, 2016) -financial services (Brannan, 2017) -Islamophobia (Zempi, 2017)
- 7. 4) Bouncers in the night-time economy Expanding night-time economy and leisure capitalism-moral panics about binge drinking/ recreational drug use Stigmatized occupation Precarity of the work Casualised workforce Dangerous work (extreme) Attempts to regulate, professionalise and unionize bouncers (Security Industry Authority, established in 2003) Links to gangsterism and criminality Intensified surveillance of the NTE
- 8. Situated door order Folk devil stereotype and urban mythology Fictive kinship Hyper-masculinity and interpersonal violence as a performative doing Collective bouncer code Private policing Bouncing as dirty work (Hughes, 1956) and emotional labour (Hochschild, 1983) Dramaturgical bouncer self (Goffman, 1961,66)
- 9. 5) Reflections from my covert passing as a bouncer
- 10. Ethnographic features and conditions Embodied autoethnography, biographical familiarity (Layered account, Rambo, 1995) Lived experience (Geertz, 1973) of doing doors embedded in the natural setting (dual identity) Longitudinal immersion Relatively small field-Hobbs et al, 2003; Monaghan, 2002; Winlow, 2001) Interaction rituals (Goffman, 1967), bodily capital (Wacquant, 1995) and hardness passport (Patrick, 1973) as fieldwork mimicry strategies
- 11. Nomadic Ethnography Six-month covert ethnography in Manchester as a working bouncer Governance of the nte (Leisure capitalism) Biographical mediation Demonized group (exotica) Multiple door sites (2 clubs, 3 pubs and 5 café bars)-engineered exit strategies Manufactured door career Nomadic style was part of ethnographic risk management (sub-aqua ethnography)
- 12. Situated ethics and the blurred bouncer self Occasioned character of ethical self regulation and ethical moments in the field (‘turning the tape off’ syndrome, being recognized, guilty knowledge, publication censorship, shelved data) Problem of going native but commitment to realism (faithfulness-Bittner, 1973) Covert research not a panacea-obviate artificiality but gain sustained problems of instigation Covert role as deeply artful and craft like
- 13. A form of edgework: Voluntary risk-taking (Lyng, 1990, 2005) A type of narrative reconstruction (Granter et al, 2015) The management of the post-fieldwork self (‘getting back into character’ syndrome) Liminality of the setting (sensitive legal tightrope-’The researcher as hooligan: where participant observation means breaking the law’, Pearson, 2009)
- 14. Authenticity, multiplicity and liminality ‘I am a survivor of child sex abuse. I am also a sociologist, a wife, a friend, and many other identities one might imagine for an adult, white female. The boundaries of these identities converge, blur, and separate as I write’ (Carol Rambo Ronai, 1995: 395-396). ‘Multiple reflections of childhood sex abuse: An argument for a layered account’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 23 (4): 395-426.
- 15. ‘In my attempt at artful sociology, emotional sociology and sociological introspection, my goal was to help the reader connect my experience with their own. By discussing lived emotional experience, readers are confronted with the things they have in common with the author and they are less likely to dismiss the situation of others are freakish and not their concern’ (Carol Rambo Ronai, 1997, 427- 428). ‘ On loving and hating my mentally retarded mother’, Mental Retardation, 35 (6): 417-432.
- 16. A local media moral panic
- 19. The Guardian, Education section, ‘I don’t want to get no bullet over no bullshit’, 6th December 2000, Dave Ward ‘A 17 stone sociologist skilled in ethnography and kick boxing’. Times Higher Education, ‘Drugs, guns and fights-all in a night’s work’, 23rd February 2001, Adam James ‘Some might also recall a short, stocky pony-tailed bouncer called called David Calvey. But this was Calvey's night job. By day he was a sociology lecturer’ Televised interview with Nick Higham at the BA Festival of Science, Norwich, BBC News 24, 5th September 2006
- 20. 6) A revival in covert research Rise in various forms of auto ethnography as well as more mixed methods research Popularity of investigative journalism (different analytic game) Virtual, online and cyber ethnography (lurking)
- 21. 7) Creative ethnography Creative ethnography as part of a toolkit to analayse complexity in lived realities (narrative and narcissistic challenges) Heartfelt, passionate, opportunistic and curious inquiries (not enterprise or policy driven) (Game and Metcalfe, 1996; Ellis, 1999)
- 22. Creative ethnography as part of a wider ethnographic imagination and sensibility (Atkinson, 2015) Resist exotica and zoo keeping (Gouldner, 1968) and textual hypochondria Recognition and appreciation of loss, failure and mistake (The Lost Ethnographies: Methodological insights from projects that never were-Smith and Delamont, 2019)
- 23. ‘The attempt to approximate some sort of precision in the study of human conduct is not unlike the task of swatting flies with a hammer. Apart from the fact that one must make the tenuous assumption that the fly will remain still, one must be willing to settle for a low batting average while facing the prospect of leaving the room in a shambles when the game is done.’ (Harold Garfinkel, 2005:99, Seeing Sociologically; The Routine Grounds of Social Action)
- 24. Howard Becker in Telling About Society is ‘convinced that there is no best way to tell a story’ (2007: 285) (-an appeal to disciplined hybridity not anything goes relativity?)
- 25. ‘There’s nothing in the world we should trade for what we do have: the bent to sustain in regard to all elements of social life a spirit of unfettered, unsponsored inquiry’ (Erving Goffman, 1983, 17, The Interaction Order, American Sociological Presidential Address 1982).
- 26. 8) Some conclusions Ethical dilemmas are complex landscapes that are managed and not resolved Codes and guidelines are abstract idealizations (disconnect to field realities) Ethnography as immersive, emotional and experiential doings
- 27. Emergent and messy nature of ethical dilemmas and ambiguities Move away from a heroic picture of the covert researcher Move away from extreme ‘love/hate’ reactions to it into appropriate use Are the social sciences missing a trick?
- 28. References Atkinson P (2015) For Ethnography. London: Sage. Brannan, M. J (2017) ‘Power, corruption and lies: Mis-selling and the production of culture in financial services’, Human Relations, 70 (6): 641-667. Bulmer M (1982) When is disguise justified? Alternatives to covert participation observation. Qualitative Sociology, 5(4): 251–264. Calvey D (2000) Getting on the door and staying there: a covert participant observational study of bouncers. In G Lee-Treweek and S Linkgole (eds) Danger in the Field: Risk and Ethics in Social Research. London: Routledge, 43–60. Calvey D (2008) The art and politics of covert research: doing ‘situated ethics’ in the field. Sociology, 42(5): 905–918. Calvey D (2013) Covert ethnography in criminology: a submerged yet creative tradition. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 25(1): 541–550. Calvey D (2017) Covert Research: The Art, Politics and Ethics of Undercover Fieldwork. London: Sage. Calvey, D (2019) ‘The everyday world of bouncers: A rehabilitated role for covert ethnography’, Qualitative Research, 19 (3): 247-262. Colosi, R (2010) Dirty Dancing? An Ethnography of Lap-Dancing. Abingdon: Willan Publishing. Denzin N. K (1968) On the ethics of disguised observation. Social Problems, 15(4): 502–504.
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