Fieldwork in Government Agencies: Access, Gatekeepers, and Ethical Silences

My first post posed the question: Why study ‘up’?
This post discusses access to the field of government agencies, gatekeepers,  and what I could and couldn’t write about in my thesis. 

Remind Me

Why don’t we study ‘up’?
Some personal reflections here. When I first embarked upon my PhD project, I was going out to study an Aboriginal community and look at how they interacted with two different government bodies. When I got out into the field, one of the Aboriginal people who worked for one of the government agencies [...]