Exploring Multiple Roles and Allegiances in Ethnographic Process in Disability Culture

Abstract

The more roles the ethnographer occupies in relation to his/her informants the more likelihood that conflicts of interest and ethical dilemmas will occur. In this paper, I want to discuss several quandaries that I confronted while conducting ethnographic fieldwork with men with cerebral palsy on their search for sexual intimacy. During this research, I occupied multiple roles in relation to research participants including employee and long-time friend of my key informant, anthropologist and disability ethnographer, disability rights advocate and disability studies scholar. I will argue that critical-reflexive exploration of these quandaries borne of multiple roles and their consequent allegiances was useful not only to enrich my understanding of disabled men's sexual situation, but also led me to questioning the conceptual assumptions of both disability rights/studies and anthropology.