Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

440 Chapter 15
strength of conscience which may be required. Psychiatrists, for example, are
notorious gossipers [about their patients]. . . . O. K., so they mainly just tell one
another. But they sometimes tell wives, people at parties, you and me. [Daniels
had done participant observation research on psychiatrists.] And few of them
would hold up under systematic pressure from government or whatever to get
them to tell. . . . The issue is not that a few brave souls do resist. The issue is
rather what to do about the few who will not. . . . There is nothing in our training—any
more than in the training of psychiatrists, no matter what they say—to
prepare us to take up these burdens. (quoted in Glazer 1975:219–20; emphasis in
original)
Researchers who conduct the kinds of studies that Humphreys did, invoke
several arguments to justify the use of deception.
1. It is impossible to study such things as homosexual encounters in public restrooms
in any other way.
2. Disguised field observation is a technique that is available only to researchers
who are physically and linguistically indistinguishable from the people they are
studying. To use this technique, you must be a member of the larger culture.
There is, therefore, no real ethical question involved, other than whether you, as
an individual, feel comfortable doing this kind of research.
3. Public places, like restrooms, are, simply, public. The counterargument is that
people have a right to expect that their behavior in public toilets will not be
recorded, period. (Koocher 1977)
Sechrest and Phillips (1979) take a middle ground. They say that ‘‘public
behavior should be observable by any means that protect what might be called
‘assumed’ privacy, the privacy that one might expect from being at a distance
from others or of being screened from usual views’’ (p. 14). Casual observation
is fine, but the use of telescopes, listening devices, or peepholes would be
unethical.
My own position is that the decision to use deception is up to you, provided
that the risks of detection are your own risks and no one else’s. When Jack
Weatherford (1986) took a job as manager of a porn shop in Washington, D.C.,
the people who came to the store to watch the movies or connect with prostitutes
didn’t know they were being studied by a participant observer, but neither
were they in any danger that their identities would be divulged. And similarly,
when Wendy Chapkis became a licensed massage therapist and became
a participant observer in her secret research on prostitution (1997), she
assumed risks, but the risks were hers. If detection risks harm to others, then
don’t even consider disguised participant observation. Recognize, too, that it
may not be possible to foresee the potential harm that you might do using
disguised observation. This is what leads scholars like Kai Erikson (1967,