This article examines assumptions embedded in the routine practice of trying to make the places represented in qualitative accounts anonymous. Anonymity is usually seen as an ethical issue, but like any representational strategy, it conceals assumptions about the nature of entities in the world and our relations with them. Focusing on place anonymization, the author argues that the use of pseudonyms and the omission of identifying historical and geographical information align research accounts with certain ontological assumptions, modes of theorizing, and corporate constructions of the public sphere. The author concludes by suggesting ways that place and identification can be rethought in qualitative inquiry.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
2.
Atkinson, P., & Silverman, M. (1997). Kundera’sImmortality: The interview society and the invention of the self. Qualitative Inquiry, 3(3), 304-325.
3.
Aurigi, A., & Graham, S. (1998). The ‘crisis’ in the urban public realm. In B. Loader (Ed.), Cyberspace divide (pp. 57-80). New York: Routledge.
4.
Bachrach, P., & Botwinick, A. (1992). Power and empowerment: Aradical theory of participatory democracy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
5.
Bakhtin, M. (1981). Forms of time and of the chronotope in the novel. In M. Holquist (Ed.), The dialogic imagination: Four essays by M. M. Bakhtin (pp. 84-258). Austin: University of Texas Press.
6.
Barbash, I., & Taylor, L. (1997). Cross-cultural filmmaking: A handbook for making documentary and ethnographic films and videos. Berkeley: University of California Press.
7.
Barton, D., & Hamilton, M. (1998). Local literacies: Reading and writing in one community. London: Routledge.
8.
Becker, H. (1968). “Freedom and responsibility in research”: A comment. In A. Vidich & J. Bensman, Small town in mass society (rev. ed., pp. 414-415). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
9.
Behar, R., & Gordon, D. (Eds.). (1996). Women writing culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.
10.
Benjamin, W. (1968). On some motifs in Baudelaire. In H. Arendt (Ed.) Illuminations (pp. 155-200). New York: Schocken.
11.
Bennett, C., & Grant, R. (Eds.). (1999). Visions of privacy: Policy choices for the digital age. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
12.
Blee, K. (1999). The perils of privilege. Law and Social Inquiry, 24, 993-998.
13.
Blumenthal, A. (1932). Small town stuff. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
14.
Boelen, W.A.M. (1992). Street corner society: Cornerville revisited. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 21, 11-51.
15.
Brady, I. (Ed.). (1983). Speaking in the name of the real: Freeman and Mead on Samoa [Special Section]. American Anthropologist, 85, 908-947.
16.
Briggs, C. (1986). Learning how to ask. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
17.
Bulmer, M. (Ed.). (1982). Social research ethics. London: Macmillan.
18.
Cameron, D., Frazer, E., Harvey, P., Rampton, M., & Richardson, K. (1994). The relations between researcher and researched: Ethics, advocacy and empowerment. In D. Graddol, J. Maybin, & B. Stierer (Eds.), Researching language and literacy in social context (pp. 18-25). Clevedon, UK: Open University.
19.
Clarke, A., & Fujimura, J. (1992). What tools? Which jobs? Why right? In A. Clark & J. Fujimura (Eds.), The right tools for the job: At work in twentieth-century life sciences (pp. 3-44). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
20.
Clifford, J. (1988). On ethnographic authority. In The predicament of culture (pp. 21-54). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
21.
Clifford, J., & Marcus, G. (Eds.). (1986). Writing culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.
22.
Coleman, J. (1961). The adolescent society. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe.
23.
Colvard, R. (1967). Interaction and identification in reporting field research: A critical reconsideration of protective procedures. In G. Sjoberg (Ed.), Ethics, politics, and social research (pp. 319-358). Cambridge, MA: Schenkman.
24.
Davis, M. (1990). City of quartz. New York: Verso.
25.
Day, K. (1999). Introducing gender to the critique of privatized public space. Journal of Urban Design, 4(2), 155-178.
26.
De Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
27.
Denzin, N., & Lincoln, Y. (Eds.). (1994). Handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
28.
Deyle, D., Hess G. A., & LeCompte, M. (1992). Approaching ethical issues for qualitative researchers in education. In M. M. LeCompte, M. Millroy, & J. Preissle (Eds.), The handbook of qualitative research in education (pp. 597-641). New York: Academic Press.
29.
Di Leonardo, M. (1998). Exotics at home: Anthropology, others, American modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
30.
Dorst, J. (1989). The written suburb: An American site, an ethnographic dilemma. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
31.
Duranti, A. (1997). Linguistic anthropology. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
32.
Eckert, P. (1989). Jocks, burnouts, and others. New York: Teachers College Press.
33.
Fabian, J. (1983). Time and the Other: How anthropology makes its other. New York: Columbia University Press.
34.
Fainstein, S. (1994). City builders: Property, politics and planning in London and New York. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
35.
Foley, D. (1990). Learning capitalist culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
36.
Foley, D. (1995). The heartland chronicles. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
37.
Foley, D., Mota, Post, and Lozano (1977). From peones to politicos: Ethnic relations in a South Texas town 1900-1977. Austin: University of Texas Press.
38.
Fraser, N. (1994). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. In H. Giroux & P. McLaren (Eds.), Between borders: Pedagogy and the politics of cultural studies (pp. 74-98). New York: Routledge.
39.
Freedman, S. (1990). Small victories: The real world of a teacher, her students, and their high school. New York: Harper & Row.
40.
Freeman, D. (1983). Margaret Meadand Samoa. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
41.
French, T. (1993). South of heaven. New York: Doubleday.
42.
Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books.
43.
Gillin, J. (1951). The culture of security in San Carlos: A Study of a Guatemalan community of Indians and Ladinos (Middle American Research Institute, Pub. No. 16). New Orleans, LA: Tulane University.
44.
Gluck, S. and Patai, D. (Eds.). (1991). Women’s words: The feminist practice of oral history. New York: Routledge.
45.
Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
46.
Goldschmidt, W. (1950). Social class in America—A critical review. American Anthropologist, 52, 483-498.
47.
Gottdiener, M. (1997). The theming of America. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
48.
Greenwald, M., & Bernt, J. (Eds.). (2000). The big chill: Investigating reporting in the current media environment. Ames: Iowa State University.
49.
Gregory, S. (1999). Globalization and the “place” of politics in contemporary theory: A commentary. City and Society: Annual Review 1998, pp. 47-64.
50.
Gupta, A., & Ferguson, J. (1997). Discipline and practice: “The field” as site, method, and location in anthropology. In A. Gupta & J. Ferguson (Eds.), Anthropological locations: Boundaries and grounds of a field science (pp. 1-46). Berkeley: University of California Press.
51.
Gutierrez, J. (1998). The making of a Chicano militant: lessons from Cristal. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
52.
Hall, S. (1996). The question of cultural identity. In S. Hall, D. Held, D. Hubert, & K. Thompson (Eds.), Modernity (pp. 595-634). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
53.
Hanson, S., & Pratt, G. (1995). Gender, work, and space. New York: Routledge.
54.
Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism as a site of discourse on the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575-599.
55.
Hart, R. (1997). Children’s participation: The theory and practice of involving young citizens in community development and environmental care. London: Earthscan.
56.
Harvey, D. (1996). Social justice and the geography of difference. London: Blackwell.
57.
Hopkins, M. (1993). Is anonymity possible? Writing about refugees in the United States. In C. Brettell (Ed.), When they read what we write: The politics of ethnography. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.
58.
Johnson, C. (1982). Risks in the publication of fieldwork. In J. Sieber (Ed.), The ethics of social research: Fieldwork, regulation, and publication (pp. 71-91). New York: Springer-Verlag.
59.
Kirsch, G. (1999). Ethical dilemmas in feminist research: The politics of location, interpretation, and publication. Albany: State University of New York Press.
60.
Kotlowitz, A. (1991). There are no children here. New York: Doubleday.
61.
Latour, B. (1987). Science in action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
62.
LeCompte, M. (1993). Frameworks for hearing silence: What does telling stories mean when we are supposed to be doing science? In D. McLaughlin & W. Tierney (Eds.) Naming silenced lives (pp. 9-29). New York: Routledge.
63.
LeCompte, M. (1995). Some notes on power, agenda, and voice: A researcher’s personal evolution toward critical collaborative research. In P. McLaren & J. Giarelli (Eds.), Critical theory and educational research (pp. 91-112). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
64.
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space (D. Nicholson-Smith, Trans.). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
65.
Lewis, O. (1961). The children of Sanchez: Autobiography of a Mexican family. New York: Random House.
66.
Lincoln, Y. (1990). Toward a categorical imperative for qualitative research. In E. Eisner & A. Peshkin (Eds.), Qualitative inquiry in education: The continuing debate (pp. 277-295). New York: Teachers College Press.
67.
Low, S. (1996). The anthropology of cities: Imagining and theorizing the city. Annual Review of Anthropology, 25, 383-409.
68.
Lukas, J. A. (1985). Common ground. New York: Knopf.
69.
Lutz, C. (1995). The gender of theory. In R. Behar and D. Gordon (Eds.), Women writing culture (pp. 249-266). Berkeley: University of California Press.
70.
Lynd, R., & Lynd, H. (1929). Middletown. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
71.
Marcus, G. (1998). Ethnography through thick and thin. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
72.
Marcus, G., & Cushman, D. (1982). Ethnographies as texts. Annual Review of Anthropology, 11, 25-69.
73.
Massey, D. (1994). Space, place, and gender. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.
74.
Mead, M. (1928). Coming of age in Samoa. New York: Morrow.
75.
Mertz, E. (1993). Learning what to ask: Metapragmatic factors and methodological reification. In J. Lucy (Ed.), Reflexive language: Reported speech and metapragmatics (pp. 159-174). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
76.
Nespor, J., & Barber, L. (1995). Audience and the politics of narrative. In J. Hatch & R. Wisniewski (Eds.), Life history and narrative (pp. 49-62). London: Falmer.
77.
Nyden, P., Figert, A., Shibley, M., & Burrows, D. (1997). Building community: Social science in action. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
78.
Orlans, H. (1967). Ethical problems and values in anthropological research. In Committee on Government Operations, The use of social research in federal domestic programs, Part IV (pp. 359-366). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
79.
Plummer, K. (1983). Documents of life: An introduction to the problems and literature of a humanistic model. London: George Allen & Unwin.
80.
Portes, A., & Stepick, A. (1993). City on the edge: the transformation of Miami. Berkeley: University of California Press.
81.
Punch, M. (1986). The politics and ethics of fieldwork. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
82.
Radin, P. (1966). The method and theory of ethnology. New York: Basic Books. (Original work published 1934)
83.
Richardson, L. (1992). Trash on the corner: Ethics and ethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 21, 103-119.
84.
Rollins, J. (1985). Between women: Domestics and their employers. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
85.
Rose, M. (1995). Possible lives. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
86.
Rose, M. (1999). “Our hands will know”: The development of tactile diagnostic skill—Teaching, learning, and situated cognition in a physical therapy program. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 30(2), 133-160.
87.
Ruddick, S. (1996). Constructing difference in public spaces: race, class and gender as interlocking systems. Urban Geography, 17(2), 132-151.
88.
Rutheiser, C. (1998). Beyond the radiant garden city beautiful: Notes on the New Urbanism. In City and Society: Annual Review 1997. Arlington, VA: American Anthropological Association.
89.
Shils, E. (1967). Social inquiry and the autonomy of the individual. In Committee on Government Operations, The use of social research in federal domestic programs, Part IV (pp. 359-366). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. (Original work published 1959)
90.
Shulman, J. (1990). Now you see them, now you don’t: Anonymity versus visibility in case studies of teachers. Educational Researcher, 19(6), 11-15.
91.
Silverstein, M. (1976). Shifters, linguistic categories and cultural description. In K. Basso & H. Selby (Eds.), Meaning in anthropology (pp.11-55). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
92.
Silverstein, M., & Urban, G. (Eds.). (1996). Natural histories of discourse. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
93.
Simon, D. (1991). Homicide: A year on the killing streets. New York: Fawcett Columbine.
94.
Smith, D. (1974). Theorizing as ideology. In R. Turner (Ed.), Ethnomethodology (pp. 41-44). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
95.
Smith, D. (1987). The everyday world as problematic. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
96.
Smith, D. (1999). Writing the social: Critique, theory, and investigations. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
97.
Snodgrass, J. (1978, November). The Jack Roller at 70: A fifty year follow-up of the delinquent boy’s own story. Paper presented at the American Society of Criminology Meetings, Dallas, TX.
98.
Strathern, M. (1991). Partial connections. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
99.
Szklut, J., & Reed, R. (1991). Community anonymity in anthropological research: A reassessment. In C. Fluehr-Lobban (Ed.), Ethics and the profession of anthropology (pp. 97-114). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
100.
Tobin, J., & Davidson, D. (1990). The ethics of polyvocal ethnography: Empowering vs. textualizing children and teachers. Qualitative Studies in Education, 3, 271-283.
101.
Tumin, M. (1952). Caste in a peasant society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
102.
Urban, G. (1996). Entextualization, replication, and power. In M. Silverstein & G. Urban (Eds.), Natural histories of discourse (pp. 21-44). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
103.
Vidich, A., & Bensman, J. (1968). Small town in mass society (rev. ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
104.
Whyte, W. F. (1955). Street corner society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
105.
Whyte, W. F. (1964). The slum: On the evolution of street corner society. In A. Vidich, J. Bensman, & M. Stein (Eds.), Reflections on community studies. New York: John Wiley.
106.
Wiseman, F. (1971). Interview with Frederick Wiseman. In G. R. Levin (Ed.), Documentary explorations: 15 interviews with film-makers (pp. 313-328). Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
107.
Wolcott, H. (1973). The man in the principal’s office. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
108.
Zeller, N. (1995). Narratives strategies for case reports. In J. Hatch & R. Wisniewski (Eds.), Life history and narrative (pp. 75-88). London: Falmer.
109.
Zukin, S. (1991). Landscapes of power. Berkeley: University of California Press.
110.
Zukin, S. (1995). The cultures of cities. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
