Spies like us

Abstract

The discipline of anthropology recoils instinctively at the idea that its researchers' labor might contribute to the national security state; other disciplines celebrate the same contributions as evidence of policy impact. In this article, we examine the seductions of espionage for professionally vulnerable (untenured) researchers that employ ethnographic methods but are operating in the shadow of market incentives and the Global War on Terror. We define “extreme fieldwork” as a research design likely to yield the kinds of data that Price identifies as “Dual Use Anthropology.” The bulk of our essay is devoted to providing warrants for the claim that there are strong incentives to brand oneself as an “extreme” fieldworker – which may be the post-9/11 equivalent of chasing what Trouillot called the “savage slot.” We argue that for some topics in certain research settings, uncomfortably, the more care and effort one invests in ethnographic best practices, the more likely it is that the researcher will engage in behaviors that could be confused with spycraft.

(Dis)courtesy Bias: “Methodological Cognates,” Data Validity, and Ethics in Violence-Adjacent Research

“…Due to similarity in techniques deployed to gather data in these spaces—from survey instruments to games, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation 2 —potential participants often see researchers not as independent actors, but rather as part of a larger body of outsiders who are often better educated, wealthier, more mobile, and culturally or politically distinct from the milieu in which they work (Lewis et al, 2019). This fact is most consistently manifest in the broad trend of potential participants confusing researchers for aid workers or journalists (Foster & Minwalla, 2018; Lewis et al, 2019), though scholars also report potential respondents assuming that researchers may be intelligence agents (Driscoll & Schuster, 2017; Thaler, 2019).…”

How to think about people who don’t want to be studied: Further reflections on studying up

“…In police states, anthropologists are often taken to be spies and closely monitored by state intelligence and police agencies (Borneman and Masco, 2015). Not only does this mean that it is difficult to understand who someone is or why they might talk to you, but this sort of research context also creates danger for anthropologist and the people who work with them, people who may at one point or another be taken for collaborators and harmed as a consequence (Driscoll and Schuster, 2018). In relaying the following quote from a key informant explaining why they collaborated with her, Armytage (2020) illustrates these dilemmas in her work on Pakistan’s political and economic elite:first, I am an excellent judge of character.…”

“…(2020: 26)It’s all here: impunity and a promise to deny; threatening gestures regarding the isolation of the researcher; and covert state surveillance, seemingly at the beck and call of the informant. Anthropologists haven’t even begun to consider how they should think about the personal safety of the vulnerable anthropologist in pursuit of elites in this type of context, nor the safety of anthropological collaborators in situations in which police action and violence is a live possibility (again, Driscoll and Schuster, 2018).…”

On Spiritualist Workers: Healing and Divining through Tarot and the Metaphysical

“…Since readers and diviners have permeable and hybridized roles, it is no surprise that clients mistake their exact skill set. Sometimes they regard them as health experts, like ethnographers are sometimes mistaken for spies, narcs (Driscoll and Schuster 2018), or psychologists. Moreover, tarot readers and other spiritualist workers have the privilege of "querent/provider confidentiality" unless lives are at risk, further amplifying the similarities between them and (other) healers such as social workers, nurses, or clergy in institutionalized religions.…”