Transparency and Unmasking Issues in Ethnographic Crime Research: Methodological Considerations

Abstract

A transparency movement has begun urging researchers to publicize their data in order to ease replication and accountability. Some ethnographers have also begun arguing that researchers should unmask, or fully disclose, field sites and participant identities in order to replicate studies, verify accounts, and monitor social phenomena over time. However, for ethnographers studying violence and crime, full transparency or unmasking can get an ethnographer harmed. Thus, I broaden the unmasking/masking discussion by arguing for partial disclosures in dangerous research. To do so, I provide examples from my previous drug market ethnography and my ongoing gang research. I then propose safer ways to disclose field sites and participants, mainly through the following: semibiographical disclosure, where the ethnographer strategically omits some data in otherwise rich biographical portraits; through partial spatial disclosures, where the ethnographer reveals the field site's general area; and through invitational disclosure, where the ethnographer invites outsiders to meet participants in the field.