Aportes actuales para reflexionar acerca de la percepción social de la inseguridad.
3.1 De las ciudades disciplinarias a las ciudades de control.
4.8.1 Introduction
According to Cameron et al. (1992) researchers “cannot help being socially located persons” (p.5). By ‘socially located’ they mean that the researcher is part of a complex web of interaction determined by both overt and covert socio-cultural rules. This is a particular concern for the researcher working in a foreign environment where such rules may not be fully comprehended. Hence, “the essential ethical issue of naturalistic observation is the extent to which the researcher accepts the existing social context, and particularly the norms and values in that context” (Oliver, 2003: 46).
Such a stance had implications for how I approached and dealt with ethical issues during my research. Guillemin and Gillam (2004) conceive of ethics in qualitative research as a procedure- practice dichotomy:
“‘Procedural ethics’ concerns approval from a relevant ethics committee to undertake research involving humans, while ‘ethics in practice’ refers to the ‘everyday ethical issues that arise in the doing of research” (p. 263).
I will follow this dichotomy in outlining the ethical approach I took to this study.
4.8.2 Procedural Ethics
Prior to the commencement of my fieldwork I submitted a detailed description of my study to Aston University’s Ethics Committee who in turn granted me formal approval to conduct the study. In the application form, I answered questions on obtaining relevant permissions at the fieldwork sites, having respect for participants’ rights and dignity, maintaining confidentiality, obtaining participants’ consent, storing and protecting data, and my plans for dealing with possible ethical dilemmas that might arise in the course of the study.
Although these a priori steps were an essential part of the ethical process, they were what Dennis (2010) terms the “standardized ethical expectations” (p.124) of undertaking the research. More challenging was the need to recalibrate my ethical position (or rather, positions), during the course of my fieldwork.
According to Dennis, “Ethnographers locate ethical decisions as internal to the research process itself, linked to the everyday interactions and ongoing research activities rather than a set of principles established external and prior to the conduct of the research” (p. 124). As Graves and Shields (1991) argue, researchers do not operate as “omniscient and autonomous agents” (p.145) within their field sites. Rather, undertaking ethnographic research is “a social process that often involves shifts and changes in the understandings of participants through time under changing conditions of work” (ibid). Static institutional protocols often fail to address ethical issues that can arise as researchers negotiate dynamic field sites
An early example of this came with my initial attempt to obtain participants’ consent using a translated informed consent form that had already been approved by the Ethics Committee at Aston University. When I presented the form to the vice-principal at Chairo and politely requested his formal stamp28, he was quite taken aback. His hitherto attitude of openness and cooperation turned to one of, if not ‘doubt’, then ‘wary puzzlement’. Why, he wanted to know, did I need such 詳細な (shosaina, ‘highly-detailed’) approval to undertake the research? What exactly was I planning to do
in the classroom? Would my research have a detrimental effect on the students and teachers? Perhaps he needed to contact the students’ parents. And what was I going to do with the data I collected?
Fruhstuck (2007), in an overview of the ethical considerations surrounding fieldwork in Japan, claims that such considerations have become reductively “urban, cosmopolitan, and Western” (p.610). Bestor et al. (2003) emphasize that in Japan the “careful cultivation of interpersonal trust is given far greater weight than formal contracts” (p.14), and that Western academic informed consent requirements “would not only be culturally unfamiliar but call into question the researcher’s cultural understanding and trustworthiness” (ibid). Lewallen (2007) states that the use of written consent forms can be “a conversation stopper in a Japanese context” (p.160).
This is not to suggest that different ethical standards can and should be applied to different research settings. Rather, in my presenting the informed consent form to the vice-principal I was unwittingly betraying my ‘cultural naivete’. What I failed to recognize was that my wife had, through her explanations to the vice-principal, vouchsafed for my professional integrity as somebody who could be trusted to carry out the research ethically. My ‘standardized’ consent form was a medium communicating an unintended message, a misconstrued ‘warning’ that my research could be potentially harmful in some hitherto unseen way. Reconciling this quandary required an approach that was “much more independently and situationally forged” (Dennis, 2010: 123).
Hence, I followed Kato’s (2010) suggestion of using a 誓約書 (seiyakusho29, ‘oath’ or ‘written pledge’). In Japanese I wrote a general description of the aims, methods, and potential uses of my research; I listed the participants rights to refuse, question, or withdraw from the research at any time; assured them of their rights to confidentiality and privacy; promised not to undertake any form of research that could cause harm, discomfort or undue inconvenience to the participants as perceived by the participants themselves; and provided the contact details of both the university I work for and Aston University (a English translation is provided in Appendix 6).
For each of the four schools I made a specific seiyakusho. I brought two copies of this document to each of the vice-principals, explained them orally, answered any questions they had, then stamped both documents, giving one to the vice-principal and keeping one myself. In addition, a similar form (in Japanese and English) was given to each homeroom teacher and ALT on the first day of observations. In doing this I was able to I was achieve a more pragmatic and situationally specific form of informed consent, though with the awareness that such an approach was necessarily incomplete: “an ethnographer often does not know what will be involved, certainly not in any detail; even less, what the consequences are likely to be” (Hammersley and Atkinson 2007: 210).
29 The use of seiyakusho is widespread throughout Japanese society as a form of personal guarantee with legal
4.8.3 Practical Ethics
In conducting an ethnography “caring interactions are established and maintained over time rather than a contract that once signed is forgotten” (Milne, 2005: 31). Doing so provides an additional safeguard against harm, particularly since maintenance of this relationship is beneficial to both the researcher and the participant. This greatly reduces the likelihood of deliberate harm by the ethnographer while greatly increasing the likelihood that the ethnographer ensures the safety of the participants (Atkinson, 2009: 19–20).
However, maintaining an ethical relationship with the participants over the two-year period of this research highlights how conforming to procedural ethics does not “help you when you are in the field and difficult, unexpected situations arise, or when information is revealed that suggests you or your participants are at risk” (Guillemin and Gillam, 2004: 273). Awareness of such situations and knowledge of the potential means to ameliorate them requires a great deal of reflexivity on the part of the researcher, what O’Leary (2004: 11) describes as, “the ability of the researcher to stand outside the research process and critically reflect on that process”. In practice, this involved continuously questioning the ethical appropriateness of my methods and whether I had respected the autonomy, dignity and privacy of the participants, as well as considering the risks of unintended harm.
Such a conception of ethics as a [research] life lived, rather than an institutional obligation met, accords with Duranti's (1997) view of qualitative research ethics as a way of professional being whereby knowledge of ‘social sensibilities’ must inform the appropriate behaviour in each situation (p.102). Similarly, Pring (2000) emphasizes the importance of “virtuous’ researchers” with “a respect for persons” (p.115). McNamee (2002:11) suggests ethics is “not ... grounded in duty or consequence but in character”. Duranti (1997) continues this theme of consequence when he states that “respect for our hosts’ sensitivity should always override our desire for ‘good’ data” (p.102).
In maintaining a ‘way of professional being’, I was at all times conscious of how I was an imposition upon the teachers, their students, and the ALTs. My most pressing concerns were twofold: one was to avoid at all costs doing or saying anything that the teachers might construe as evaluative or critical. The second was to be, as much as possible, a constructive and emphatic presence in the classroom, even if that meant no more than maintaining a benign smile. I was conscious too that my access to the four schools depended on my dual status as both a husband of an elementary school teacher working in the same region (and known to some of the participants30), and as an academic at a nearby national university. My ethical responsibilities thus extended beyond my immediate fieldwork sites to include both personal and professional domains, and consequently the potential for unintended harm was considerably expanded.
4.8.4 Openness and silence
The differing way the schools and teachers engaged with me was very similar to Bondy’s experiences in researching Burakumin communities in Japan (2013). He used the dichotomy of ‘openness’ and ‘silence’ to represent the various levels of participation he encountered and the nature and extent of the data he collected. Referring to the (pseudonymous) communities where he carried out his research he states that
“In Kuromatsu, silence shaped my entrance and was something I had to continuously negotiate throughout the research process, while in Takagawa, the openness enabled my access, and it too was negotiated through my interactions while in the field” (p.581).
I found that such a dichotomy was evident not just between schools, but within schools as well. In Chairo, for instance, the vice-principal was an enthusiastic supporter of my research and did much to facilitate it, yet the teachers whose classes I observed were wary of engaging with me. What was interesting was that their ‘silence’ was, somewhat paradoxically, articulated through politeness. It was not that the teachers did not answer my queries or comments, but rather the manner in which they replied was overly polite and quite formal. Takeda (2013) relates a similar experience in his study of Japanese women married to Australian men where, despite his shared ethnicity with his subjects, he found that “the politeness inherent in Japanese cultural practices created an environment that only allowed for formal and polite questioning and did not allow for questioning on a more deeper level” (2013: 293). Hendry (1989) has highlighted how politeness in Japan is often used for indirection or oblique communication in order to maintain face and intentionality. She draws upon the Japanese custom of elaborate gift wrapping, 贈答品包装 (zotouhin housou), to explain the use of politeness as a discourse strategy by Japanese “to protect themselves from the harshness of direct exchanges by appropriately wrapping their honne, their individual opinions and views, so that exchanges may be made without loss of face” (1989: 627).
Conversely, A. sensei was quite forthcoming in talking with me, engaging in 裸話 (hadaka hanashi, literally ‘naked talk’), expressing in frank language her hopes and frustrations with the new curriculum. I thus found the use of politeness to be less of a generalized cultural convention and more of an individual screen behind which some participants could hide.
4.9 Conclusion
This chapter has explained in detail the research design and procedure adopted for this study. It began by justifying the socio-cultural research paradigm adopted and followed this with a detailed description of the qualitative research design and methodological procedures for participant selection, data collection and analysis. In addition, issues relating to ethnography, participant
observation, research positonality, field notes, field sites, access, participant relations, translation, and ethical issues were all examined. The following chapter will focus on the use of critical discourse analysis as a necessary means of contextualizing the classroom ethnography.