Investigative Ethnography: A Spatial Approach to Economies of Violence^*

* Funding for the research described in this article was provided by the Social Science Research Council’s Drugs Security and Democracy Program and its International Dissertation Research Fund. Throughout my research, I learned a tremendous amount from the editorial staff of VerdadAbierta.com, especially Juan Diego Restrepo, César Molinares, and Maria Teresa Ronderos.

TEO BALLVÉ, Assistant Professor, Peace & Conflict Studies Program and Department of Geography, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY; [[email protected]].

ABSTRACT

Based on research in Colombia, this article argues that violent economic situations in specific spaces can be productively studied through a hybrid style of research that combines techniques of investigative journalism with the conceptual and methodological commitments of ethnographic inquiry. “Investigative ethnography,” as this marriage of epistemologies and methods could be called, can help researchers manage the practical problems of access—meaning access to people, sites, and information—within the spaces produced by violent forms of capital accumulation. Questions of space and spatiality are central to investigative ethnography’s approach to these violent economic ensembles. Although oriented toward research on the systematic use of force for profit, this article’s methodological considerations and practical recommendations are also relevant for scholars conducting fieldwork in other kinds of violent spaces and difficult settings.

Keywords:

• Colombia
• ethnography
• journalism
• methods
• violence

Notes

¹ For geography’s disciplinary engagements with ethnography, see Katz 1994; Herbert 2000; Hart 2003; Crang and Cook 2007; and a special section of Environment and Planning D: Society and Space Vol. 10, No. 5, 1992.

² See, the Social Science Research Council’s (SSRC) Drugs, Security, and Democracy “Working Papers on Research Security” edited by Desmond Arias [https://www.ssrc.org/programs/view/dsd/dsd-working-papers-on-research-security-2/] and the working paper series “Field Research and Ethics in Difficult Settings” edited by Susan Thomson [http://conflictfieldresearch.colgate.edu/working-papers/papers/] .

³ Due to space constraints, I have sidelined debates about the ethics and writing of ethnography; see, Lave (2011) for an overview.

⁴ A notable exception includes the scholars who discussed violence and fieldwork in a previous issue of this journal (Geographical Review, Vol. 91, No. 1–2, 2001): Lorraine Dowler, Maureen Hays-Mitchell, Jennifer Hyndman, Paul Routledge, Yamuna Sangarasivam, and Bret Wallach.

⁵ In the interest of minimizing their risk and because many of my interlocutors were illiterate or semi-literate, my IRB protocol approved by the University of California’s Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects stipulated that informed consent from all nonpublic figures was to be conferred orally.