Insider Ethnography or the Tale of the Prison Governor’s New Clothes

Abstract

Whilst many ethnographic and anthropological studies report the work of outsiders exploring remote and alien cultures, in this chapter I will discuss a different approach: that of `insider' ethnography. This is concerned with ethnography `characterised by significant levels of initial proximity between researcher and researched' (Hodkinson, 2005: 132). Drawing upon my own research on prison managers, funded by HM Prison Service and conducted whilst I myself was a prison manager, I will discuss the origins and design of my ethnographic work. It is a reflexive account of conducting fieldwork that considers how the dual identities of insider and researcher were entangled in ways that are significant not only methodologically but also in revealing dynamics of power (Sparks et al., 1996), in this case between researcher, researched and the host organisation, who was also my funder and employer.