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Pré-Publication, Document De Travail Année : 2023

Being loyal to fieldwork: on building the "contract of silence"

Denisa Butnaru
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Résumé

The aim of the present contribution is to analyze how relations of loyalty emerge between researcher and researched during ethnographic fieldwork and to defend a perspective against the principle of open science. I discuss methodological issues with respect to my several years of multi-sited fieldwork experience in various labs, research centers and medical institutions, during which I inquired into the design and use of exoskeletal devices. Exoskeletal devices are technologies applied to three fields of application: rehabilitation, industry and the armed forces. Their invention is the subject of high levels of economic and scientific competition. Given these constraints, I was compelled to develop "loyalty strategies", one of which I call the "contract of silence". I associate this category with an ethnographic exercise in how to address one's interlocutors during fieldwork. I conceive of this process as a result of consciously retaining the information obtained from interviewees that might endanger the position of the researcher in the field. Although a tacit contract with one's interlocutors during ethnographic fieldwork implies anonymity, certain sensitive fields and research situations require forms of auto-censorship and the control of published results. I associate these strategies with the fabrication of fieldwork secrecy.
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hal-04054900 , version 1 (01-04-2023)

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Denisa Butnaru. Being loyal to fieldwork: on building the "contract of silence". 2023. ⟨hal-04054900⟩
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