ABSTRACT
A growing interest in “grand societal challenges” type fieldwork means that researchers are increasingly likely to find themselves engaged with those who suffer “real” problems: sexual abuse, endemic poverty, age discrimination, religious or political extremism and drug addiction, to name but a few. This, in turn, will invariably force them to confront, and formulate a response to, a set of subtle and complex moral ambiguities. This chapter relies on parallel conversations in photojournalism to outline some of these ambiguities for ethnographers. Photojournalism, after all, has kept company with suffering and death far longer than ethnography has. While this chapter does not “resolve” these ambiguities, it does seek to help researchers identify similar ambiguities in their own fieldwork and to provide guidance for those courageous enough to tackle them.
