Partnership Research: A Case of Divergent Ethnographic Styles in Prison Fieldwork

Abstract

Sam Fujisaka is presently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oregon. John Grayzel, who holds a J.D. and is a member of the New York State Bar, works for USAID in Mauritania. Fujisaka is presently conducting field research in Bolivia. The authors wish to express their thanks to Hoyt Cupp, Superintendent of the Oregon State Penitentiary, for his gracious cooperation; to the inmates and employees of the institution for their acceptance and assistance; and to Charles Hoff for his continued encouragement of our project. I N 1973 WE COMPLETED an ethnographic study of the Oregon State Penitentiary. In doing separate but coordinated research, each investigator developed relationships with significantly different populations of informants representative of varying subgroups within the overall inmate population. As a result, each investigator arrived at divergent impressions and analyses of prison life. In retrospect, we maintain that each of our personal backgrounds, biases, and attitudes became important field variables. Further, due to the nature of the population studied and the institutional context, an unavoidable determinant of our respective inmate samples was the extent to which particular ranges of inmates were more suited and responsive to each of us as individuals rather than as objective researchers. The point is offered that in social research requiring intensive participant observation, the intentional expression of personal orientation can be methodologically valuable. We believe that this is particularly applicable vis-a-vis the prison milieu, as demonstrated not only by our own experience but that of several other previous workers in this field. T o illustrate these points, we describe the research and its findings, discuss the particular demands of penitentiary research, provide brief samplings of our respective sets of informants, and draw relevant profiles of ourselves. Implications for nonprison research are also considered.