Exploring some ethical dilemmas and obligations of the ethnographer

Abstract

This paper focuses on the ethical position of the ethnographer when encountering unethical activities. Ethnography affords a rich insight into cultures, often behind previously secure doors but it is also a demanding science. Our gatekeepers control our access and our relationships with them can determine our destiny. This paper offers an exchange with ethics and the conditions experienced during an ethnography that challenged and disturbed this researcher's understanding of its rules and expectations. By drawing on data and experiences from a classroom ethnography it aims to consider the limits of ethics and the generic ritual that regardless of cost we must do no harm to others.

Keywords:

• ethnography
• ethics
• education
• technology
• cultures
• classroom

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Barbara Dennis for her encouragement to write this paper and our digital exchanges, which helped me in confronting the troubled thoughts I found myself with surrounding this data and the positioning of the ethnographer. Without the affordance of the technology of email these words would not have emerged, they would have remained quiet.