Pseudonymizing place names in ethnographic work
Calling my ethnographer friends and readers! Can you point me to any sources that talk about the politics or ethics of (or practical issues involved in) using pseudonyms for place names in ethnographic writing? In my current project on progressive Muslims, naming the cities where I worked would make it pretty easy for readers to figure out which groups I worked with, and thus could compromise individual participants’ anonymity. Yet not mentioning the cities at all elides some of the geographic diversity of my participants and also some specificity that grounds the project in the real world. Looking for a middle ground.
If you can’t point me to sources, I’d still be interested in hearing how you might handle this yourself.
@drlibertybell @drbrutuspowers @kmtam @annebracken @literary-ethnography
Hi there - this seems like quite the challenge. I don't have any sources (other than this which a quick google search turned up: http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/459/1/0808_managing%2520anonymity%2520and%2520confidentiality.pdf ). It gives examples of a few different projects so you can see the pros and cons of anonymizing people and places, but no real middle ground offered that I can see. It might generate some ideas though.
Maybe it depends on who you are writing for? If this is a journal article does it matter? If it's for an audience closer to your community of research or a more public audience then I can see how it would be problematic. In that case can you construct composites that would allow you to avoid identifying people easily? That would give you the room to get more real about the location.
If the worlds seem just too small for that, have you asked your research participants directly what they think? Or maybe write something as a sample and run it by them?
Sorry - not much more to offer! Just a lot more questions.
