This article explores the ethnographer’s equivocal role as an accomplice of bureaucratic power through a reading of Kafka’s short story “In the Penal Colony.” The researcher’s position when enrolled and affined in the bureaucratic field, which Kafka so uncannily animates, is illustrated via four ethically charged fieldwork experiences in Ugandan, Indian, and Myanmar prisons. I argue that these experiences were telling situations of “edifying qualms,” which were both morally ambiguous and analytically generative. The article concludes by suggesting that methodological attention to these edifying qualms enables ethnographers to use their deep-set complicity with bureaucratic violence as an antenna for picking up the impure pragmatics of doing “less harm,” and for imagining a better world altogether.

中文翻译：

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作为帮凶的民族志学家——卡夫卡流放地官僚田野工作的疑虑

本文通过阅读卡夫卡的短篇小说《在流放地》，探讨了民族志学者作为官僚权力帮凶的模棱两可的角色。研究人员在被卡夫卡如此不可思议地激发出来的官僚领域注册和关联时的地位，通过在乌干达、印度和缅甸监狱中的四次充满伦理道德的实地工作经历得到了说明。我认为这些经历讲述了“启发性疑虑”的情况，这在道德上是模棱两可的，在分析上是产生性的。文章最后指出，对这些具有启发性的疑虑的方法论关注使民族志学家能够利用他们与官僚暴力的深层次共谋作为天线，以获取“减少伤害”的不纯实用主义，并设想一个更美好的世界。