Putting on the Corporate Hat: The Methodological Challenges and Benefits of a Mining Corporation as a Site of Ethnographic Fieldwork
Catherine Pattenden, University of Queensland
A decade ago, Gupta and Ferguson (1997) called for a rethink on definitions of ‘the field’ in ethnographic research, and that we defetishize ‘the field’ as a bounded locality and embrace more flexible and opportunistic strategies for understanding the complexities of people and social practice. In this paper I discuss my experience of fieldwork within a large mining corporation undertaken as part of my PhD. What started out as a delineated and short-term vehicle, agreed between myself and the mining company, to facilitate access to my defined ‘research participants’ became a two year employment engagement in which I became embedded within the corporate system. This required that I, for a while at least, adopt the persona of corporate employee and attempt to see social and political landscapes through corporate eyes. This experience was highly influential on my understanding of the complexities and inner-workings of a large multi-national, and the political and business drivers that can shape intersections between people and corporations. In this paper I focus on the ethical, methodological and political challenges, and the epistemological benefits, of this approach.
