Ethic-methodological aspects of ethnographical work from living together with crack users

Abstract

The ethnography in environments where there are illicit practices certainly imposes ethical and methodological issues of greater importance. Living with people, in these cases, involves specific risks, both to the researchers and to their interlocutors. Incurring in illegal acts may prove to be a contingency to remain in the field, where legal barriers add up to the limits set by bodies. The use of the drug can suggest an ethic of its own that is not inherent to it but conditioned by a situation that is radically beyond the control of the anthropologist. Crack users has revealed accurate knowledge of their living conditions and good partners in the production of academic knowledge about themselves.