Convenors
Marco Marzano, University of Bergamo
marco.marzano@unibg.it
The investigative approach (Douglas 1976) has a long and distinguished history within qualitative research, although in recent decades it has been marginalised and accused of violating the ethical and professional standards of the discipline.
Investigative ethnography distances itself from the ‘cooperative model’ which became established in anthropology and subsequently extended to sociology. According to this model, the ethnographer’s task is to immerse themselves entirely in the life of a single group or organisation and to describe the daily lives of its members by adopting their point of view, adopting their worldview to the extent that they often become its ambassador within the scientific community or in public opinion. The premises of investigative research are very different. In a nutshell, they consist of: 1) the conviction that complex societies are permeated by an enormous quantity of conflicts, divergent interests and social tensions between individuals, groups, organisations and institutions. 2) the certainty that individuals and organisations constantly engage in strategic behaviour, lie, conceal the truth, put on a show, and keep a significant part of their activities hidden from prying eyes. The task of social research in this context is, on the one hand, to understand the nature of these conflicts and describe them using the tools of the social sciences; on the other hand, to go ‘behind the scenes’ and understand the social life of the group or organisation in question as it really is, rather than as the individuals involved claim it to be. This requires an investigative approach that makes use of either a covert method (the investigator ‘infiltrates’ the group secretly, observing without being identified as an observer) or the use of ‘cross-checking’ .
The aim of this panel is to rediscover and promote the investigative approach in qualitative research. We invite submissions of papers focusing on covert research (in which the researcher has concealed their identity from the subjects they have observed) or research in which the information provided by the group under study has been verified by cross-checking it with data from external sources.
Contributions from all empirical subfields and disciplinary perspectives (anthropological, sociological, or other) are welcome. Analyses addressing both the methodological and ethical issues associated with investigative research are equally welcome. Preference will be given to papers presenting empirical cases, but reflections of a predominantly theoretical or normative nature will not be rejected out of hand.
Open questions
- What are the advantages of an investigative approach in ethnography?
- Why did you choose an investigative method to explore social reality?
- Why did you choose a covert method?
- Which authors have inspired you to take an investigative approach?
- Why are ethical matters so relevant in investigative research?
- Are you still in touch with your research participants?
- How did your subjects react to the publication of your fieldwork? Have they read it?
Keywords
covert methods, social investigation, social conflict, research ethics, impression management, lies, fronts
Convenors’ bio
Clemens Eisenmann is postdoctoral researcher at the Collaborative Research Center “Media of Cooperation” at the Universities of Konstanz and Siegen (Germany). His research areas range from social theory, sociology of the body, medicine, religion and media studies, to interaction analysis, ethnomethodology and qualitative methods. His dissertation research at Bielefeld University explored spirituality in contemporary yoga as social practice. Eisenmann studied Sociology, Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Augsburg and has taught for many years in the fields of social theory, sociology of culture and qualitative methods. His recent publications include “Doing Ethnomethodological Ethnography. Moving between Autoethnography and the Phenomenon in ‚Hybrid Studies‘ of Taiji, Ballet, and Yoga” (with Robert Mitchell) (2024) and “Spirituality as Social Practice” (in German), De Gruyter: Berlin/Boston (2022).
Christian Meyer is a professor of Sociology at the Department of History and Sociology of the University of Konstanz, Germany, where he is also chairman of the Social Science Archive (Alfred Schutz Memorial Archive) and director of the Binational Center of Qualitative Methods (BZQM). Before, he was a professor of sociology at the University of Würzburg and of communication at the University of Duisburg-Essen. His research interests include social and cultural theory, phenomenological sociology, sociology of embodied interaction, studies in comparative sociality, and qualitative methods of social research. Recent publications include “Context-Sensitivity and Context-Productivity: Notions of ‘Practice’ and ‘Practicality’ in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (Frontiers in Sociology 9, 2024), “Alfred Schütz, Aron Gurwitsch, and Harold Garfinkel. The Phenomenological Origins of Ethnomethodology” (Routledge International Handbook of Ethnomethodology, 2025); “Ethnomethodological Ethnography” (Qualitative Research 24, 2022); “The Phenomenological Foundations of Ethnomethodology’s Conceptions of Sequentiality and Indexicality” (Gesprächsforschung 23, 2022).
Lorenza Mondada is Professor for linguistics at the University of Basel. Working on social interaction in ordinary, professional and institutional settings, within an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic perspective, she focuses on video analysis and multimodality. Her research on how the situated and endogenous organization of social interaction draws on a diversity of multimodal resources, articulates language with gesture, gaze, body posture, body movements, objects manipulations as well as multisensorial practices involving vision, touch, taste and smell. She has extensively published in J. of Pragmatics, Discourse Studies, Language in Society, ROLSI, J. of Sociolinguistics, co-edited several collective books, as well as elaborated her approach of sensoriality in the book Sensing in Social Interaction (CUP, 2021).