Ethical Hypothetical Scenarios

You are working with a local church congregation and are present during many of their religious ceremonies. You are not a member of the church. Everyone is clapping and singing while you sit quietly in your pew. Eventually, everyone moves to the altar to accept communion.

You don’t want people to think you do not approve of the way they worship, nor do you want people to think you presumptuous by participating.

Do you participate in the ceremony by clapping and singing and eventually receiving communion? Or do you remain a quiet and detached observer?

• Examine the relevant ethical guidelines for appropriate behavior. These may be personal, discipline-specific, institutional, cultural or legal.
  • In this case, relevant guidelines may be personal, institutional or cultural.
• Identify the ethical mandates that are in conflict or at issue. You can refer to the Ethics of Fieldwork Chart or put them in your own words. Eventually, it will be useful to compare to the Chart for further assistance.
  • In this case, the ethical conflict centers around #17: Learning local norms of conduct. Simply learning the norms, however, may not be possible. The problem may remain, if people within the group do not agree on what is acceptable behavior.

• Learn whether there is a standard norm. If so, the dilemma quickly disappears. However, if there are contradictory opinions held within the community, you will need to contemplate the issue in more depth.
• Specifically: What are the degrees of harm that will ensue if you choose one path or the other? Is sitting quietly less risky than joining in? Or vice versa?
• Compromise: Can you avoid an either/or dilemma and identify a compromise that allows you to avoid offending either side? To try to find a compromise, you can…
  • consult with various members of the congregation, including, but not only, the people Xin chargeY such as the pastor. Try to get a sense of why some might be offended if you did not participate, and why some might be offended if you did. You may find that the sides are not equally invested. That is, you might find that people who want you to participate would be pleased if you did, but not offended if you didn’t, whereas the people who do not want you to participate would be highly offended if you did.
  • be specific about what each side “needs.” In this case, the participation in the service may be masking a larger issue, one that may be spiritual, may be personal. Again, talk to people to identify what is at the core of the issue.

Fieldworker 1:

If I’ve already received approval to be there observing, then the safest bet for me is to remain sitting, quietly, observing. This is what I said I would do so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that thatGs what I’m doing. If people encourage me to get involved, whether explicitly by telling me to go up and get communion or to “get happy” and start clapping, then I would tentatively do so. But if I knew some people did not like this, I would politely decline. Inaction always seems better than actively offending.

Fieldworker 2:

I think it’s a fallacy to assume that doing nothing is better than doing something. I would determine whether there was a norm for behavior, but if people were split on the issue, and both were equally adamant about it, then I would follow according to the leader, the pastor. The congregation has given him or her their trust, and I couldn’t be faulted for doing the same. If anyone questioned me on this, I would simply inform them that the pastor has told me to do this.

Note: There is potentially another ethical dilemma here. What if the congregation and pastor agree you should participate while there, but your religion forbids you do take sacraments such as communion in another church?

You are working with a college club sports team to understand the organization from an emic (insider’s) perspective. Your research has focused on the social structure of the team, particularly as it operates to unify a diverse group of athletes who arenGt getting scholarships or any other outside incentive to play.

The team has been cited numerous times for violating the no-drinking policy, and has been told that if they violate it again, they will be disbanded. In the course of your work, you realize that the drinking culture of the group is an integral part of the team. T-Shirts, cheers, chants and songs all herald alcohol as an important part of the culture. You see this particularly in terms of the social bonding that occurs off the playing field at the numerous parties held. You canGt offer confidentiality to the team since you are working on a video ethnography.

What do you do?

• Examine the relevant ethical guidelines for appropriate behavior. These may be personal, discipline-specific, institutional, cultural or legal.
• Identify the ethical mandates that are in conflict. You can refer to the Ethics of Fieldwork Chart or put them in your own words. Eventually, it will be useful to compare to the Chart for further assistance.
  • In this case, the ethical conflict might be summarized as: #22: truthfulness and veracity vs. #18 negotiation of defined harms and #25: embarrassing revelations.

• Universally: Is one of these ethical mandates clearly more important than the other?
• Specifically: What are the degrees of harm that will ensue if you ignore each of the ethical mandates? Is the harm greater in one or the other?
• Compromise: Can you avoid an either/or dilemma and identify a compromise that allows you to avoid a direct conflict of the ethical mandates? To try to find a compromise, you can…
  • consult with your key informants and present the dilemma to them. In this case, consult the team members and get a sense of their concerns about continuing to violate the no-drinking policy. Have their been changes? If so, can you discuss these?
  • be specific about what each side “needs.” In this case, you might ask yourself exactly what about the drinking culture is needed to explain your conclusions? Can you address this without suggesting it remains a problem? Or how about the other side? What are the regulations exactly? Can legal aged players drink? If so, can the video show only those members without proving a violation of the school’s policy?

Fieldworker 1:

If I encountered this problem, I would work towards a compromise. I would find out exactly what the administration deemed an example that would warrant their expulsion as a team. However, most of my work would be with the players, since my goal is to portray them accurately and humanely. I would ask them to talk on camera about the drinking culture that got them into trouble with the university. They could discuss these issues as ones of the recent past. This would allow me to accurately address the role of drinking culture without arguing it was still a problem. Instead, the players could make it clear how and why drinking was important to them, without ever lying about their current problems. As long as my study was not specifically about how sports teams renegotiate identity in the face of forced change, this compromise should not affect the validity of my research.

Fieldworker 2:

I tend to be fairly protective of my informants. If there really is any chance at all that the group could be expelled because of my research, I would back away from discussing those issues. Do I invalidate my research? It depends. If I construct an interpretation of the group that suggests they do not drink, and that drinking is not an issue for the group at all, then yes. This would be unacceptable. However, if I found equally relevant avenues for analysis, perhaps based around gender issues, or competition, or the struggle to construct coherent identity for a team that gets little to no financial or fan-based support from the university, then I think this is OK. The focus is still emic, still relevant, still accurate, and my analysis of the group is not undermined by the omission of the drinking culture.