Spies Like Us

Abstract

This collaborative essay attempts to synthesize one of the implications of “extreme fieldwork” that invites a level of detail and intimacy with human subjects, and the cultivation of networks with extra-legal entities, that is really quite unwelcome from the perspective of the security bureaucracy of the host country. Rather than offer a toolkit for ethnographic methods that can accommodate violent or risky fieldwork settings, our analysis raises two uncomfortable issues: 1) for certain research projects, there are foreseeable negative consequences for our human subjects and research collaborators that no amount of care and effort can attenuate, and 2) for certain research projects, the more care and effort one invests, the more likely the researcher will engage in behaviors that approximate spy craft. Our specific call is for situational awareness in research design and mentoring, which we view as both crucial and difficult in academic environments that reward risky ethnography.