Ethnography

This paper examines ethnography as both a methodological practice and a form of writing, and specifically how ethnography as a textual product may shape and be shaped by the methodological process. We argue that a critical discussion of this relationship is especially important in relation to the ethnography/ethnographies of violence. Examining a range of recent texts, we consider whether different forms of violence necessitate, or have prompted, different styles of ethnographic writing. The paper raises questions about how decisions to adopt particular styles of writing can affect the substance of empirical material, and we reflect on the use of testimonio, biography and quasi-novel, as well as issues of anonymity and composite characterisation. Finally, the paper introduces the special issue contributions from five authors, who were invited to contribute reflections on the multiple ways in which their field method has intersected with representation, textually and intellectually.

In 21st-century Guatemala transnational gangs (or maras) have become erstwhile emissaries of extreme peacetime violence, distilling in spectacular fashion the fear, rage, and trauma swirling around out-of-control crime. Young gang members (or mareros) are drawn in by and work hard to recreate the phantasmagoric figure the maras cut in social imaginaries, linking the acts of violence gangs perform to the ways gang members – and myriad others – make sense of this violence. This article traces how collective fantasies about gangs are essential in the making of the ‘real’ marero by engaging with the oral history of a single informant: a former member of the Mara Salvatrucha named Andy who became a protected witness for the Guatemalan government. Through Andy’s life and violent death, it illuminates how essential shared fantasies and falsehoods are in the production of knowledge about criminal terror, as well as in the production of violence itself.

Ethnographers may experience troubling relationships while conducting research. Strained interpersonal relationships with members of the communities where ethnographers work can be caused by emotional entanglements, acts of violence, or betrayal. When harm occurs, ethnographers are faced with ethical and emotional challenges about reporting one’s experience versus descriptions of social facts. This article compares desahogarse, a way of speaking on Dominican streets used to express everyday betrayals, with the genre of the narrative ethnography to explore modes of presenting the contextualized self in fieldwork. In particular, the use of the textual strategies of perspective and composite characters and events are explored as writing approaches when faced with a troubled fieldwork relationship that had ethical implications on the access to the street community being researched. Ethnographers should consider the ethical, representational, and analytical gains of an ethnography that relies on a deliberate, if partial, exploration of the emotional experiences of fieldwork.

Based on ethnographic research in a Guatemala City mara territory, this article examines the place of nostalgia in residents’ accounts of spiralling insecurity and gang violence. Anchoring many depictions of their circumstances past and present, emotional and narrative structures of decline and nostalgia pervaded interviews, interactions, and the research experience here. While discourses of loss and longing pose certain methodological quandaries for attempts to reconstruct processes of change in a volatile environment, I propose that they do communicate true and valuable information for understanding the social experience of violence in Guatemala City’s gang territories. I also argue for understanding nostalgia as a resource – for inhabitants and for ethnographers alike – in the face of ‘ontological insecurity’ in violent fields. Providing reassuring narratives and tools for articulating normative claims for our informants, nostalgia also holds a strong appeal for ethnographers, presenting both dilemmas and possibilities in researching and representing contemporary insecurity.

Ethnographies of Latin American and Caribbean gangs tend to emphasize the violent practices of these social groups. My own research in Kingston, Jamaica, on criminal leaders known as ‘dons’, analyzed their entanglement with the Jamaican state and studied how their relations with inner-city residents resemble citizenship relations. While dons are undoubtedly directly associated with Jamaica’s high homicide levels, they also provide social welfare and public order, and my work has focused principally on this relatively non-violent side of donmanship. In this article, I reflect on the factors underlying this particular representational emphasis, which has sometimes led to accusations of my ‘romanticizing the dons’. Assessing these various factors, the article considers whether it is ethically justifiable and epistemologically sound to produce ethnographies of violent actors without dwelling in detail on their acts of violence. Given the skew in studies of criminal organizations, and of inner-city life, toward extensive description of and analytical attention to violence, I propose that producing ethnographic narratives that decenter it is in fact justifiable. In addition, studying criminal organizations through less common frameworks can open new avenues of exploration that may be obscured if we continue to satisfy popular and academic expectations of the centrality of violence.

This article re-examines ethnographic research I conducted on violence and insecurity in a favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It examines how the ethnographic strategies I chose – both methodologically and representationally – were shaped by different forms of violence. Contrasting a spectacular incident of violence, where a drug-dealer shot a person and a neighborhood dog, with more banal and everyday forms of violence, I ask how my ethnographic approach shaped my anthropology, or analysis, of violence. I argue that my focus on more spectacular types of violence was shaped by three factors: my own methodological and political positioning, the relationship between some forms of violence and narration, and the trope of the everyday state of emergency. These factors, though, tend to obscure ethnographic attention to more banal forms of violence. I argue that a deeper understanding of violence can be produced by paying equal attention to more banal forms of deprivation, but that this analysis requires a different ethnographic approach.