Helping the Poor or the System? Examining My Participation: Observation in Social Service Organizations

Abstract

In this article I examine my experiences of practice and research in the social service field, which may be relevant to applied and clinical sociologists who work beyond academia, as well as academic ethnographers in general. Although the researcher as a person from a particular background profoundly impacts the data collected, examining the role of the researcher in everyday situations (at some research site) sheds light on important social processes. I provide three examples from my study of social service organizations, emphasizing how critically examining my own responses to role conflicts during ethnographic research provides crucial insight into the ways in which well-meaning social service workers end up regulating and disciplining the people they purport to serve. I conclude by urging academic sociologists to consider the benefits of applied work for sociological knowledge and encouraging applied sociologists to examine their own emotional topography in their frontline work as a research method in itself.