Live Methods argued that there is an ethical imperative for sociologists to really listen to what precariously positioned people say. Research methods can be exploitative in how they render people’s presence. This paper discusses how I practised Live Methods in one ethnography conducted with young migrants in London over 15 years. This research was meant to last two years, but continued on the basis of an emerging ethical covenant with participants – that both researchers and people taking part believed that these individual stories said something about individual lives, but also about others’ experiences of precarity. A tension emerged between keeping this covenant and sociological strictures that forbade making general claims from qualitative ‘samples’. In this article, I work productively through this tension in close engagement with ethnographic encounters with one participant, Mardoche. I argue that conducting research across time and the in-depth quality of the interviews opened up the possibility of making more general claims from individuals’ stories. I conclude that while my ethnographic iteration is in keeping with Live Methods ’ ethical imperative, whether it is ‘speakable’ within the discipline of sociology is questionable.

中文翻译：

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社会学上难以言说？民族志的伦理学和生活方法

Live Methods 认为，社会学家必须真正倾听处于危险地位的人所说的话。研究方法在如何呈现人们的存在方面可能具有剥削性。本文讨论了我如何在 15 年中与伦敦的年轻移民一起进行的一项民族志中实践 Live Methods。这项研究本来打算持续两年，但继续是在与参与者达成的新兴道德契约的基础上进行的——研究人员和参与者都认为这些个人故事讲述了个人生活，也说明了其他人的不稳定经历。在遵守这一契约与禁止从定性“样本”中做出一般性主张的社会学约束之间出现了一种紧张关系。在这篇文章中，我通过与参与者 Mardoche 的民族志接触密切接触，富有成效地克服了这种紧张关系。我认为，进行跨时间的研究和深入的采访质量为从个人故事中做出更普遍的主张提供了可能性。我的结论是，虽然我的民族志迭代符合 Live Methods 的道德要求，但它在社会学学科中是否“可言说”是值得怀疑的。