Abstract
Intimacy is usually understood as pertaining to what is most private and personal. In their fieldwork, ethnographers often professionally intrude into intimate situations. This way, intimacy is not only an object of study, but also raises reflexive, positional and ethical issues in social research (Aull Davies, 1999). Multiple issues must be addressed. As concerns informants and participants to the ethnography, the ethnographer might learn personal things about participants that may put them in danger. As concerns the ethnographer’s own intimacy, the researcher is also ‘studied’ by the participants and finds her/himself intimately involved in the field (Favret-Saada, 1977).
With this panel, we seek to address a range of open-ended questions, including, but not necessarily limited, to the following ones:
– What can/should ethnographers do with all the sensitive and intimate informations they collect?
– How to handle ethical issues concerning sensitive data?
– How to theorize the researcher’s personal positionality in the field with regard to intimacy issues?
– What is the relation between intimacy as a topic of study and intimacy as a heuristic tool for research development?
Keywords:
Intimacy / Privacy / Relationships in the field / Research ethics / Data protection / Researcher protection / Security / Loyalty / Trust
List of sub-disciplines or interdisciplinary areas of concern:
Ethnography / Anthropology / Sociology / History / Geography / Ethics / Philosophy
Convenors
– Alicia Vogt
After a double interdisciplinary degree in “Franco-German Studies” at the University of Clermont Auvergne and the University of Regensburg, within the framework of the Franco-German University (UFA/DFH), Alicia Vogt joined the Franco-German double master’s degree in Ethnology/Anthropology between the EHESS in Paris and the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. She is currently working on her dissertation in the anthropology of music at both institutions and at the Centre Marc Bloch (Berlin), under the direction of Denis Laborde and Hans Peter Hahn. Her research focuses on music and migration and more specifically on the musicians of the Orpheus XXI orchestra founded by the Catalan conductor Jordi Savall.
-Mathias Dambuyant
Doctor in sociology, he defended his thesis in 2020 entitled: “To watch over and punish. Experiences of electronic surveillance in France, Belgium and Switzerland”. Since 2021, he has been engaged on two post-doctorates by the French Ministry of Justice. The first one (2021) focused on the analysis of a pilot measure, the CJPP, the judicial control with probationary placement, for perpetrators of domestic violence. The second one (2022) is about the BAR (Bracelet anti-rapprochement). Mathias Dambuyant is also a research associate at the IIAC laboratory (Institut Interdisciplinaire d’Anthropologie du Contemporain) at the EHESS.