schaffer_ethics

I am a person of relative privilege lobbying City Council for changes in waste management that could easily affect many different people in Troy. I am backed by other people of relative privilege—white, middle class—and very few people who do not share this background. Changes in waste policy in Troy, while seemingly minor, could easily influence people who do not go to City Council meetings. More strident collection policies could engender illegal dumping, regressive waste taxes, etc. We are working to change a system we don’t understand that well, and we are working from a point of view that is fairly limited.
 * Privilege/Policy/Putrescence **

A similar concern exists with the neighborhood composting project. We are going to build compost piles on lots that adjoin the houses of people who aren’t involved in the project. It’s not a big deal from my perspective—it’s dirt, it’s worms, it’ll probably involve some flowers too—but each pile runs the risk of becoming a fetid and un-cared-for pile of anaerobically digesting muck that attracts animals.

How to address this: seek input from outside this narrow circle of middle-class activists. Community meetings? Consensus conferences? Perhaps easier (for everyone involved): interviews to understand waste problems as constituted by people outside our socioeconomic location.

This falls somewhere between Judith Stacey’s “Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography” and Tina Fey’s “Mean Girls”: because of the nature of my population-of-interest, all of my friends and colleagues know them. Many of them //are// my friends and colleagues! I care about everyone I work with in Troy Compost, and it is very difficult for me to separate my advocacy work from my personal life.
 * The blurry line between fieldnotes and gossip**

As such, memos and papers run the risk of becoming “burn books.” To date, I have never called anyone a “fugly slut” (but who knows, really). The naturalness of my dual role as friendly advocate and inquisitive ethnographer may mask a “deeper, more dangerous form of exploitation” (Stacey, 22)—that my closeness to the group is both real and instrumental for data collection, and furthermore that the overlaps between group membership and my own professional world leave open the possibility of undesired transmission of personal information under the guise of data.

I try to navigate this by playing the sociologist card and vocally expressing my ethnographic inquisitiveness, trying to make my position as researcher known and acknowledged by the people I work with. I try to let people in the group know that I will tell stories about them. I need to be more careful about this, especially as I start conducting interviews. I need to let folks in the group know that they’re going to appear in my field-notes. And I need to let composters look over things before I show colleagues/try to publish.