Blocking the exit: Research ethics and bureaucratic writing practices

I argue that the standard model of research ethics pushes the ethnographer of bureaucracies to the cautious, concise and compliant textual practices styles of the bureaucracy itself. Given the methodological importance of writing to ethnography, this matters. To make the argument, I draw on my experience of my decision to embargo my PhD thesis, an ethnography of an international donor agency. I show how the key gatekeeper to my research sought to translate concepts from research ethics (consent, avoidance of harm) into insisting on writing and stylistic practices familiar to his organisation (scope of work, risk), in order to constrain future academic publications. These dilemmas played out in the text of the thesis, its styles, forms and arguments. In studying up, the ethical demands of writing present challenges to the text and its methodological significance. I suggest that navigating these methodological challenges demand strategies that also start with the text.