Description

In recent decades, academic research has come under increasing institutional surveillance and control. Doing Ethnography traces the rise of ethical review procedures, open science mandates, and integrity protocols, examining how these developments shape ethnographic practice. It critically explores key themes such as doing no harm, informed consent, transparency, anonymity, researcher positionality, and the sharing of field notes. The book argues that contemporary academia often enforces universal, bureaucratic forms of regulatory ethics. Rooted in quantitative and (post-)positivist paradigms, these frameworks frequently clash with ethnography’s interpretive, intersubjective, and immersive fieldwork approach. In response, it calls for a situated, context-sensitive ethics of care attuned to the specificities of ethnographic engagement. Ultimately, Doing Ethnography offers both a critical reflection on institutional power and a plea to recognise and sustain the epistemic diversity on which academic freedom depends.

Annelies Moors is an anthropologist and professor emerita at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research of the University of Amsterdam. Most recently she was the principal investigator of the ERC advanced grant Muslim marriages and held the NIAS fellowship The struggle for the future of ethnography.

This book rescues research ethics, integrity and transparency from the clutches of an alienated and alienating managerialism and puts them at the heart of a relational ethnographic practice. It is a vital companion for all caring researchers. - Ghassan Hage, University of Melbourne