Embodied Diagnostics and the Limits of Participant Observation By sharing this story, I want to consider the boundaries that anthropologists set, or have set, for themselves when conducting fieldwork. I'm talking about operations that move us beyond the limits of our discomfort: the ethically ambiguous, illegal & illicit, dangerous, or simply intersecting with an experience-area you don't want to go into. How do we say "this is okay for you, but not for me" without having informants lose faith in us? It's a part of fieldwork to be uncomfortable, and overcoming that discomfort is a sign that you're becoming more aware of yourself in relation to the community about whom you are writing. I remember discussing this in my Anthropological Fieldwork Methods and Research Design course, and arguing an "ends justifies the means" approach to participant observation that would have anyone explore anything they wanted to. This is largely, still my perspecti...
Writings in Anthropology & Public Health