Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted at CCP Games, an Icelandic video game development company, I speak to the methodological and ethical complications that arise, as well as the insights to be gained, when working ethnographically alongside and within corporate entities.

Paper long abstract:

With the rise of digital platforms, questions surrounding the role of what Tarleton Gillespie terms "custodians" of such online spaces continue to loom large (2018). Simultaneously, gaining ethnographic access to such institutions is challenging and oftentimes predicated on one's ability to demonstrate 'value' to the company in question (cf. Welker 2016). Against the backdrop of my ethnographic research on Icelandic game developer CCP Games, this paper highlights the complexities of studying corporations from within due to the necessity of contributing to corporate success while conducting participant observation. Keeping in mind Welker's (2014) argument that corporations are neither inherently 'good' or 'bad,' this paper suggests that anthropologists not shy away from corporate-engaged research. Instead, I argue that anthropology, a deeply colonial disciplinary endeavor that is itself far from benevolent, should not presume to judge research partners' merits and to bound off particular interlocutors accordingly. Anthropologists should instead seek to answer research questions through partnerships grounded in ongoing commitments to reflexivity rooted in self-reflection on researchers' situatedness à la Haraway (1988). In doing so, the discipline stands to gain access to a wider range of research partners while better encouraging work that promotes good and minimizes harm. Ultimately, this paper hopes to highlight the fact that ethnography has been and always will be rooted in complicated webs of research relations and questions of researchers' motivations. By acknowledging the particular financial and ethical complexities of corporate-engaged anthropology directly, however, I hope to make space for similar work in the discipline's future.