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This study aims to critically expose and explore “taking sides” in the context of a covert ethnography of bouncers in the night-time economy of Manchester, UK.

The methodology adopted is covert ethnography. The author reflects on the application and use of situated deception within an embedded and insider ethnography of bouncers, alongside other relevant covert ethnographies. Fieldwork vignettes are drawn upon to articulate the management of situated ethics and moral dilemmas.

The findings argue that bouncers are a deeply maligned occupational group, who perform a valuable regulatory role in the night-time economy. Moreover, a covert role ethnographic presents an interesting liminal stance of being on both sides, rather than a reductionist choosing of a single sides. Theoretically, phenomenological bracketing and ethnomethodological indifference are used to justify the position taken in the paper.

Covert research has limitations around fieldwork time consumption, instigation tactics and “going native” distortion, alongside common fears of ethical belligerence and cavalier morals.

The lessons learnt, particularly for early career researchers, are about pursuing creative ethnographic methods.

Occupationally, bouncers should be less demonized and more accessible to more women. This rather hyper-masculine domain should be disrupted and democratized.

The field is relatively niche, with a purist covert ethnographic approach being an innovative way to unpack it.

This paper examines how small firms that produce “e‐learning” materials collaborate and communicate with their clients, external agencies and end users. Our premise is this: given increased demands for more sophisticated and “learning‐led” products, it is becoming increasingly crucial for e‐learning firms to source and exploit content, education, knowledge and expertise that is extrinsic to the traditional boundaries of the “firm”. These shifts raise a set of problems related to how firms can effectively interact and collaborate with others in order to create, distribute and evolve effective e‐learning tools and products. Based on our own case study research and building on the existing literature on “communities of practice”, we argue that the formation of new “learning communities” is a strategy now being undertaken by leading firms in order to meet demands for “learning‐led” products.

This book chapter reflectively explores the challenges of studying provocation, satire, bad taste and offence in stand-up comedy. The author’s sociological lens on the topic is situated within the broader field of humour studies, which is a relatively small yet creative and innovative field within the human, cultural and social sciences. This lost ethnographic project contains shelved and dormant interview data with a number of stand-up comedians, including the controversial and emotive late Bernard Manning and an early career Steve Coogan. The project also explores the author’s autoethnographic journey into rant poetry, as both a hobbyist and, on further reflection, a way of keeping the project informally but theoretically alive. The issues of censorship, political correctness and informed consent are key ones in the author’s confessional type analysis. Finally, the value and richness of loss, failure and resilience as marginalised yet significant and unacknowledged learning resources in our academic adventures are frankly discussed. The call here is for more lost ethnographic projects to be recognised and appreciated in academia.

Sociology and nursing have served each other's purposes for many decades in the United States. Not only has the profession of nursing been a subject for sociological study, but since the 1930s if not before, sociology has been considered an important part of educational preparation for nursing practice in the United States. Sociology textbooks for nurses in hospital training programs were published from the 1930s to the 1970s (Bogardus & Brethorst, 1945; Smith, 1976). Even the Catholic Church found it fitting to provide nursing students with a grasp of social issues; a text authored by nuns, one a nurse and the other a sociologist, received the imprimatur of the local bishop (Preher & Calvey, 1950).

The Mental Capacity Act 2005 (HM Government, 2005) introduced safeguards to protect people who lack capacity from intrusive research. While these safeguards stemmed from predominantly medical ethical review concerns and developments aimed to protect people from physical and psychological damage and harm, the Act relates to all forms of research. The implications of the requirements of the Act for the conduct of social care research and the identification of helpful approaches or development of new knowledge concerning people who may lack capacity are, as yet, unknown. There are some concerns that the Act does not fully account for social research, does not recognise its importance to and differences from health‐related research, and may even hamper such research from taking place. This paper describes the findings and implications from a research project funded by the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) and the Department of Health that considered the impact of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 on the ethical scrutiny and development of social care research. The particular focus of the study was processes relating to university research ethics committees (URECs). The study was undertaken in two stages, beginning with an online survey of UREC policies and procedures and was followed by interviews with social care researchers working in areas in which people may lack capacity according to the terms of the Act. Recommendations for research ethics review are made that will be of importance to practitioners, policy‐makers and researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to offer an overview of contemporary approaches to the challenge of managing positionality and to discuss their applicability to fieldwork in contested fields.

The paper is driven by the author's experience of disconcertment during her fieldwork for a study of economic prioritization of access to new pharmaceuticals. Here she was pushed to take sides between health economists, clinicians and patients. Based on an iterative literature review, the paper identifies contemporary approaches to side-taking and discusses their practical applicability by constructing counterfactual accounts of a specific situation related to her fieldwork.

The author provides an overview of three “modes of intervention” characteristic of contemporary ethnography: political activism, organizational development and intervening description. The author presents the research agenda, the methodological principles and the means of intervention of each of the three modes, and discusses their applicability to the fieldwork process.

The overview of contemporary approaches to managing positionality is relevant for researchers doing fieldwork in contested fields. The paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches, and is intended as a resource for ethnographers who want to clarify their own positionality and prepare or improve their strategies on how to take sides in the process of doing fieldwork.

While the question of how to take sides is a classical challenge for organizational ethnographers, only few studies exist that look across contemporary ethnographic positions on how to manage positionality in the process of doing fieldwork. In addition to providing an overview for the individual ethnographer, this paper aims to participate in a collective academic conversation on the subject of managing positionality in the process of doing fieldwork.