Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/10.17234/SEC.36.15

„Are We Like Guinea Pigs to You or Something?“ On the Ethnical and Methological Challenges of Researching Homelessness (Translation)

Ana-Marija Vukušić
Melanija Belaj

Abstract

The article addresses the ethical and methodological dilemmas that emerged from research on socially marginalized citizens of Zagreb, specifically people with lived experiences of homelessness. In the first part of the paper, we provide a brief overview of selected features of previous research on homelessness. We then present the specificities of developing our research approach, or “methodological network,” in which, through experimenting with classical and common ethnographic methods and experiences based on initial observations from a distance, through participation (volunteer work), and interviewing, we realized the importance of ethnography of non-intrusiveness: listening, waiting, and socializing. In the next section, we deal with the positioning, or more precisely, the overlaps of our research, volunteer, and, conditionally speaking, friendly roles in different fieldwork contexts, and the development of strategies to overcome these overlaps in order to achieve “research efficiency” and subsequently “calm” our methodological and ethical questioning.

Keywords

homelessness; fieldwork; ethnography; ethics; methodology

Hrčak ID:

325703

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/325703

Publication date:

30.12.2024.

Article data in other languages: croatian

Visits: 33 *