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Paper Short Abstract

This paper proposes re-socialising "studying up," a mode of ethnography that tends to assume social and ethical distance from research interlocutors in powerful institutions. I reflect on a personal experience of institutional scrutiny over a manuscript written about a humanitarian organisation.

Paper Abstract

The practice of “studying up,” that is, conducting ethnography within powerful

institutions (state actors, corporations, international organizations) rather than among

marginalized communities, has for long become established in anthropology. Remarking that

influential institutions have the power to resist anthropological knowledge production, key

works in this tradition have argued for a rethinking of questions of research ethics and

representation within such research configuration. Based on a process of institutional

scrutiny over an ethnographic manuscript that I wrote about a humanitarian organization, I

argue that leaning on the personal registers of relationships developed through fieldwork

may be productive to help resolve institutional resistance to ethnography when “studying

up”. Remaining open to the possibility of forging shared understandings and strategic

alliances with interlocutors who represent powerful institutions may help highlight

institutional inconsistencies, dissonances, and contradictions. A fuller ethical consideration

of what may be at stake for both researcher and interlocutor – the importance of research or

of the institution’s work or concerns over career and life prospects – may help foster

potential alliances or mutual understandings that may also help resolve tensions between

researched instiution and researcher.