CHAPTER THREE
3.4 Reflections from the field: three queering possibilities (and problems)
3.3.3 Possibility (and problem) 3: ethnographic-activism
Last and certainly not least, a multi-sited ethnographic approach also seems to unlock a number of opportunities for activism with regards to how we study inclusion.
Initially, a possibility for activism emerged through the very ‘doing’ of ethnography.
Take, for example, an email I was sent by a participant (Reg) after attending a meeting with the campaigners, the property developers, and the Council:
“Dev and I were talking on the way home about the effect of having someone in the role of ‘documenter’, and clearly typing what people are saying. I think it adds a huge layer to the ‘performance’ and makes them [the property developers]
think - constantly - I am being watched here. Which does raise
39 Fieldnotes taken after an interview with Ems, April 2018.
40 Fieldnotes taken after an interview with Anita, March 2018.
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the question of how bad they behave when they don’t think they’re being watched!”41
In this instance, the role of the ethnographer finds an activist dimension in the role of
‘documenter’. Indeed it seemed that observing the unfolding of events served to heighten the performative dimension of roles in the field and thus the property developers’ need to ‘behave’. Whilst this could certainly be read as undermining the traditional ethnographic goal of depicting social reality as it ‘naturally is’ (Brewer, 2000), it nevertheless unlocked ethnography’s more political dimensions, enabling our engagement to be used to safeguard the very subjects of inclusion against the bullying rhetoric and intimidating practices that, as it emerged, were a central component of the property developers’ tactics. In this case, and given the evidently asymmetrical balance of power which permeated relationships in the field- on the one hand, a self-organized campaign and community group, on the other, a company who sells properties at an average of £850,000 - studying ‘LGBT-friendliness’ from an ethnographic perspective involved abandoning the belief that being a good ethnographer was like being ‘a fly on the wall’ in favour of a more politicized understanding of ‘observation’.
Moreover, in the social world of activism, I also deployed my status as a ‘doctoral researcher in a Business School’ to gain ‘respectability’ in the eyes of the Council and the property developers, quelling some of the campaigners’ fears of simply being portrayed as a ‘bunch of angry activists’. But, more broadly, my institutional dwelling in a University was also mobilized in the attainment of more menial tasks such as the printing of flyers, leaflets, and zines, as well as gaining access to academic publications about the intersectional issues and struggles faced by more marginalized members of LGBT community(ies). In both these instances, my role as ‘researcher and activist’ could be mobilized to further the campaigners’ aims and to redress some of the imbalances, in terms of ‘respectability’ and access to resources, which separated the world of business and activism.
Another ethnographic possibility for activism was unlocked through the contradictory subjectivities, roles and positionalities I inhabited in each social world. In the
41 Fieldnotes, September 2017; email correspondence between Reg and I.
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‘diversity world’ of business I often drew from queer and critical perspectives on
‘diversity’ and ethnographic insights collected in the social world of activism to query diversity managers’ and senior professionals’ assumptions about the straightforward benevolence of ‘LGBT-friendliness’. Rather than simply challenging their perspectives, I mobilized these moments of tension to unpack participants’- and my own- worldview. For example, when talking to a participant in the field who worked for an organization which offers LGBT professional networking services what she thought about the claim that corporations were merely jumping on the ‘LGBT-friendly bandwagon’ for their own self-interest, she responded by saying that the fact that
‘LGBT-friendliness’ was now “a giant advert for companies”42 was at once “sad”43 and “important”44 because whilst she would rather “not feed into the machine and just grow vegetables and live happily…that’s not how the world works”45.
Relaying my queer activist apprehensions in the ‘diversity world’ of business thus served the ethnographic goal of revealing something about participants’ understanding of ‘how the world worked’. But it also served a political goal, challenging some of my own taken for granted assumptions about the hegemony of capitalist logics. Indeed, what also emerged from this engagement was the existence of a desire to ‘live happily’
beyond the confines of capitalist exchange relations, which, as Gibson-Graham (1999) argue, is one step towards the opening-up of “alternative economic representations”
(p82) of what the world could be. Ultimately thus, a multi-sited accentuation of the ambiguous performativities, positionalities and subjectivities adopted and engage-in in each field unlocked a variety of activities possibilities with regards to the study of
‘organization’ and to the Business School more broadly (discussed in more detail in Chapter Nine).
42 Interview with Rosy, April 2017.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.
94 3.5 A note on ethics
All participants in the field were anonymised. Details which would risk re-identification have been removed.
One concern with ‘ethics’ developed in the field has been the role and way in which one can do critique. I recognize that this research was only made possible given the access, hospitality, and time given to me by often powerful and/or important figures in the field of ‘LGBT diversity and inclusion’. Yet, rather than this indebtedness resulting in a shying away from critique, I resolved to make available and send all material to research participants and organization to whom this ethnographic project owes its existence. In doing so, I hope to open up critical spaces of discussion and conversation and mutual engagement, as opposed to mere distanced critique (Gilbert, 2016)
On the other hand, I have also struggled to deal with the ethics of doing observant participation with The Friends of the Joiners Arms because some of the knowledge developed in the field could jeopardize elements of the still (ongoing) campaign. I have resolved to embargo some sections of Chapter Seven in order to protect the campaign and the campaigners.