Essentials of Sociology. George Ritzer

      Illegal Acts

      In the course of ethnographic fieldwork, a researcher might witness or even become entangled in illegal acts. This problem confronted Randol Contreras in his research on a group of Dominican men who robbed upper-level drug dealers in the South Bronx (Contreras 2017). These “stickup kids” engaged in brutal acts of violence and possessed illegal drugs and cash. Contreras, himself a former—though admittedly unsuccessful—drug dealer, had to be careful to avoid participating in illegal activities that the stickup kids were describing to him, particularly because some of them were childhood friends.

      In other cases, researchers must weigh sticky legal and ethical ramifications for participants. Publishing an account of such a dramatic act might help the researchers’ careers, but it might also send the perpetrator of the illegal act to jail. It was also possible that not informing the police, or refusing to turn over field notes, could lead to imprisonment for the researchers

      Violation of Trust

      Researchers can betray participants’ trust in several ways. For instance, the researcher might inadvertently divulge the identity of respondents even though they were promised anonymity. There is also the possibility of exploitative relationships, especially with key informants. Exploitation is of special concern in cases where there is a real or perceived imbalance of power—often related to race, class, or gender—between researcher and participant. In the Tuskegee case, for example, African American men suffered the adverse effects of the research even though syphilis is distributed throughout the larger population. Although this research should not have occurred under any circumstances, a more equitable research design would have meant that most of the participants were white males.

      It is also a betrayal of trust for the researcher to develop inappropriate relationships with participants. One noteworthy example of this is a study conducted by Erich Goode (2002) to better understand the stigma of obesity. Goode has publicly acknowledged that he had sexual relations with some of his female informants. He argues that because of this, he was able to obtain information that may not have been obtainable by any other means. However, one must ask about the cost to participants of his obtaining the knowledge in this way. Because Goode’s participants did not have full knowledge of his motives, they were unable to make informed choices about engaging in sexual relations with him. In this case, the power imbalance between researcher and participant led to exploitation.

      The best-known example of sociological research involving deception and intrusion into people’s lives is Laud Humphreys’s (1970) study of the homosexual activities of men in public restrooms (“tearooms”). Humphreys (1930–1988) acted as a lookout outside tearooms and signaled men engaged in anonymous acts of fellatio when members of the public or the police were approaching. He interviewed some of the men with full disclosure. However, he also noted the license plate numbers of some of those he observed and tracked down their addresses. Humphreys appeared at their homes a year or so later, in disguise, to interview them under false pretenses. In this way, he uncovered one of the most important findings of his study: More than half the men were married, with wives and families. They were active in the tearoom trade not because they were homosexual but because sexual relations in their marriages were problematic.

      Humphreys deceived these men by not telling them from the outset that he was doing research on them and, with those he interviewed under false pretenses, by not revealing the true nature of the research. His research had at least the potential of revealing something that most of the participants wanted to conceal. He later admitted that if he had the chance to do the research over again, he would tell the participants about his true role and goal. But the research itself is not without merit. It helped distinguish between same-sex acts and gay identity. It provided much-needed insight into the social construction of sexuality and the difficulties involved in understanding how people develop their sexual selves.

      Trending On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City (University of Chicago Press, 2014)

      Alice Goffman

      © University of Chicago Press

      Maintaining a certain level of objectivity and distance from the individuals one is researching can prove challenging, especially when one is immersed in their daily lives for an extended time. Ethical dilemmas can arise when researchers empathize too much with the people being studied. Alice Goffman found herself facing just such a dilemma when conducting fieldwork on how young black men and their families negotiate the criminal justice system in one Philadelphia neighborhood she calls 6th Street. Most of these men were on parole or probation or had outstanding warrants. They spent much of their time trying to avoid the police and incarceration. Law enforcement does not make this easy for them. Goffman observed the police harassing these men in a variety of ways, from stopping and frisking them on the streets to searching their homes, often without probable cause. The courts offer little recourse. Missed court dates and failure to pay court fees make it difficult for these men—and by extension their families and friends—to avoid the legal system.

      During the six years that Goffman was in the field, she developed close relationships with two men in particular, Mike and Chuck. For a time, she even became their roommate. While establishing strong connections is important to build trust and gain access to research sites and subjects, Goffman found herself spending more time—and feeling more comfortable—with her friends on 6th Street than she did at the university at which she was studying. She also found herself engaging in legally questionable activities. One night she spent “on the run” with Chuck and his brother Reggie, hiding with them in a neighbor’s house from the police. After Chuck was shot and killed, Goffman drove Mike around to try to find Chuck’s killer. During one of these drives, Goffman waited in the car when Mike, who was carrying a loaded gun, got out and followed a man whom he thought shot Chuck. Luckily, Mike determined that this was the wrong man and returned to the car. If Mike had shot and killed this man, Goffman could have been an accomplice in a conspiracy to commit murder. On the Run reveals that the decision of when to observe and when to participate is complicated both ethically and legally when conducting ethnographic research. ●

       Visit edge.sagepub.com/ritzeressentials4e, to

       Watch Goffman discuss her research findings from On the Run in her TED Talk, “How We’re Priming Some Kids for College—and Others for Prison.”

       Read a critical examination of the reliability of Goffman’s ethnographic methodology in Gideon Lewis-Kraus’s (2016) article, “The Trials of Alice Goffman.”

      For 40 years researchers studied the progression of syphilis in hundreds of poor black men in Tuskegee, Alabama. Unethically, they did not tell them they had the disease, nor did they treat them for it. Worse, they simply watched them suffer and eventually die painfully.

      Courtesy of ONE Archives at the USC Libraries

      Objectivity, or “Value-Free” Sociology

      Another issue relating to sociological research is whether researchers are, or can be, objective. That is, do they allow personal preferences and judgments to bias their research? Many argue that value-laden research jeopardizes the entire field of sociology. The publication of such research—and public revelations about researcher biases—erodes and could destroy the credibility of the field as a whole. This discussion is traceable, once again, to the work of Max Weber (Black 2013). Taken to its extreme, value-free sociology means preventing all personal values from affecting any phase of the research process. However, this is not what Weber intended in his work on values.

      In fact, Weber