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Pains and Possibilities in Prison : On the Use of Emotions and Positioning in Ethnographic Research
Malene Molding Nielsen Acta Sociologica 2010 53: 307 DOI: 10.1177/0001699310379143 The online version of this article can be found at: http://asj.sagepub.com/content/53/4/307

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ACTA SOCIOLOGICA 2010

Pains and Possibilities in Prison

On the Use of Emotions and Positioning in Ethnographic Research Malene Molding Nielsen
University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

abstract: The article describes the complexity of researching staffprisoner relationships ethnographically, and scrutinizes how the complexity linked to the research process may inform an analysis of relationships in prison. I argue that ethnographic research comes with uncertainty and insecurity, because the participation of the researcher, as an informed and involved outsider, requires shifting social engagements in relation to which the researcher constantly has to guard and disguise information and positioning to observe confidentiality and build trust. I demonstrate how the experience of the researcher mirrors and resembles the insecurity and uncertainty that accompanies prison relationships that I characterize as relative. I explain why it is therefore difficult to distinguish between insider and outsider, front and back, public and private, trustful and cautious and friend and enemy, and how this results in a constant guarding and disguising of information and positioning among officers and prisoners. Finally, I argue that while social relativity provides uncertainty and multiple loyalties that contribute to the low trust environment of the prison, it also makes possible the compromises, discretion and flexibility required to ensure a tolerable humane flow of everyday life by providing for management of both personal and social agendas. Keywords: emotions and positioning in ethnographic research u low-trust environments u officers and prisoners u prison ethnography challenges u prison pains u prison relationships

Introduction
The strains and conditions of imprisonment and of working as staff in prison have been extensively addressed in recent years (see, e.g., Liebling, 2001, 2004; Crawley, 2004; Arnold, 2005; King, 2007; Bennett et al., 2008; Crewe, 2009). Despite calls for descriptions of the complexity of conducting research in violent environments (Liebling, 1999; Liebling and Stanko, 2001), accounts of the strains and conditions of researching prison life often fade away in field notes, memories and private conversations. Yet they carry potential in terms of scrutinizing epistemological premises of research. Field experience, knowledge and position are closely related, and by allowing ourselves to reflect critically on this, we may unveil important analytical insights about our object of inquiry.

Acta Sociologica u December 2010 u Vol 53(4): 307321 u DOI: 10.1177/0001699310379143 Copyright # 2010 Nordic Sociological Association and SAGE (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC) www.sagepublications.com
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Acta Sociologica 53(4) This article is one result of an ethnographic study of the officerprisoner relationship as it unfolds in everyday life in an open Danish prison. While there has been an often politically motivated tendency in criminological and sociological research to focus on offenders (Liebling, 2001), and in prison ethnography to concentrate on either staff or inmates, this study includes both groups. This implies that the researcher, simultaneously, sought to establish an ethnographic presence in the everyday lives and interactions of officers and prisoners. It is experiences from working ethnographically like this that the article discusses. The purpose of the article is twofold. First, it is to critically scrutinize the challenges of building trust and ensuring confidentiality while conducting participant-observation among officers and prisoners in an environment characterized by intimacy, secrecy, distrust, anger, tension, addiction, distress and a thriving presence of crime. Second, it is to demonstrate how these challenges may provide insights into defining features of prison relationships, i.e. their relativity and uncertainty; features that result in a constant guarding and disguising of self and other. The intention is to stimulate discussions on the use and potential of ethnographic research in a prison context. In using the emotionally straining conditions of the fieldwork experience to unfold the relativity and uncertainty that frame relationships in prison, the intention is to both emphasize and capitalize on emotional aspects of knowledge production that together with other data contribute to the analysis. I do this by describing the pains and possibilities of relationships in prison, and the guarding and disguising that accompanies them. Moreover, I seek an understanding of relationships through emotions that come together with uncertainty, guarding and disguising. In the first section, I lay out the methodological starting point for this analysis and the reflexive approach that has guided it. In the second section, I describe challenges I was confronted with in, simultaneously, conducting participant-observation among officers and prisoners; challenges that are straining because they point to social dynamics and characteristics of the prison environment that are beyond the control of the researcher. Yet they constitute the available prospects for researching the officerprisoner relationship ethnographically like I did. I describe in the third section the implications of my liminal presence that became my entry point and that thus shaped my social engagements with officers and prisoners. This takes me to an allegorical presentation of prison everyday life that depicts the complexity of social interaction and relationships. It also sets the stage for a disclosure of epistemological issues relating to knowledge and positioning, data access and the ontology of relationships in prison. Hereafter, I describe how, immersed in the social landscape of the prison, I devised strategies for circumventing social complexity and, finally, I explain how these resemble and reflect social relationships in prison in a broader sense.

Methodological departure
In this article, I draw on the sociologist John Laws work on methods (2004) and on selected contemporary debates on epistemology in ethnography (Jenkins, 1994; Hastrup, 2004a, b, 2005). In arguing for a symmetrical approach to science that embraces different kinds of scientific representations of reality, Law calls for social science representations that capture the messy, unclear and incoherent characteristics of social life as a complex of realities that overlap, interfere and are partially connected (Law, 2004: 245, 61, 66). In responding to Laws call I emphasize the presentation of my material as allegory, i.e. the art of meaning something other and more than what is being said and which thereby holds two or more things in concert that do not necessarily join together. As such, allegory carries the potential of making several realities visible at once (Law, 2004: 88, 97), and, in so doing, depicts the non-coherence that characterized the conditions I studied. 308
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Nielsen: Pains and Possibilities in Prison Law argues that whereas conventional talk about method is closely associated with rules and norms of best practices that often become indistinguishable from lists of dos and donts and that offer more or less bankable guarantees for a secure arrival at a scientifically defined destination, methods go beyond the way we usually imagine them (Law, 2004: 40). They do not discover and depict realities but participate in the enactment of them (Law, 2004: 40, 45) by silencing some aspects and giving voice to others. From this constructionist perspective realities are not explained by practices and beliefs, they are produced in them (Law, 2004: 59) and, in so being, they point to scientific viewpoints, conventions, ways of working and ways of being (Law, 2004: 10, 40). While I agree with Law that we as researchers contribute with constructions of realities, including social and natural theories about realities, it does not mean that the ethnographic field is constructed as opposed to being real. It means the field is contingent upon analytical objective and scale (Hastrup, 2005: 139). In linking methods with both ways of working and being and enactments of reality, Laws approach resonates with recent ethnographic conceptions (Jenkins, 1994; Hastrup, 2004a, b) of the relationship between epistemology and ontology. In emphasizing the relational character of knowledge production, they elucidate how ethnographic knowledge connects to a particular epistemology where the relation to the object or the mode of knowing bends back into the object itself (Hastrup, 2005: 143). Furthermore, they take the relational character of knowledge further than Law by accounting for the embedded nature of ethnographic understanding. They argue that in doing fieldwork ethnographers immerse in social relationships in order to feel their nature and directive force. It is through such incorporated engagements that ethnographers relation to their object of inquiry is installed as part of the object when the ethnographic understanding begins to emerge (Hastrup, 2004b: 460, 464, 468; Hastrup, 2005: 143). As such, relational aspects influence the process by which facts are established, and epistemology and ontology converge (see Rosaldo, 1993: 16896; Hastrup, 2005: 143). It is from this perspective, the situation of the fieldworker is characteristic of the conditions being studied (Jenkins, 1994: 442). In following this line of argument, to understand is, therefore, also to acknowledge and systematically seek to reflect on ones own participation and presence in the field. It is beyond the scope of this article to provide a complete analysis of my participation and presence in prison during the entire fieldwork period. Instead, I describe emotional experiences and conditions of my fieldwork process that have a dominant presence in my data, and that, therefore, provide one important perspective on my fieldwork presence and participation. I do this by locating emotionality within concerns of inter-subjectivity that rail against the separation of (objective) knowledge from (subjective) experience (Pickering, 2001: 485). The knowledge I produce, as a result of my field engagement and the analytical journey that followed, is best described as being rooted in a phenomenological understanding of fieldwork as a being-in-the-world. As such, my being was not located in myself as a subject or in the object of inquiry but in between, in my relationship with the world (Gieser, 2008: 302). In reflecting on my own participation and presence in the field, I therefore analyse aspects of my relationship with people who populated the field and use this analysis to inform my discussion of, what I call, determining characteristics of relationships in prison. The empirical material presented in this article was collected in relation to an explorative study that scrutinized the officerprisoner relationship and the implications of this relationship for both officers and prisoners experiences of living and working in prison. Access was formally granted through the Prison and Probation Service and consultations with the prison Governor and the Security Coordinator. In preparing for the study I made a series of familiarization visits (11) to different kinds of institutions under the Prison and Probation Service that informed my engagements with officers and prisoners. I also held meetings with staff and prisoners representatives (spokesmen) where the project was presented and discussed along 309
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Acta Sociologica 53(4) with my presence in prison everyday life. In this process especially staff expressed resistance, scepticism and researcher fatigue that they related to negative experiences with previous researchers who they felt had violated safety, focused solely on prisoners and patronized and bypassed them as a staff group. Initial and actual access to staff was, therefore, established through a dialogue where staff articulated what was especially important for them regarding my presence in their everyday life. This resulted in initial and ongoing assurances about impartiality and confidentiality, and an agreement about issues relating to my appearance (dress code) and my ongoing dialogue and communication with them about the project and my whereabouts, among others. Staff resistance and the general researcher scepticism partly accounts for my awareness of the need to balance my time and attention relatively evenly between staff and prisoners without appearing to be taking sides. The study was conducted in an open prison for male prisoners in Denmark during a 10-month period divided into two phases. I spent the initial nine weeks (Phase 1) conducting informal interviews and participant-observation of staff-to-prisoner, staff-to-staff and prisoner-to-prisoner interactions covering all periods of the day and all days of the week. I conducted the second phase over a four-month period specifically focusing on everyday life and interaction in and around two wings.1 During this phase I randomly selected half of the prisoner and half of the officer population on the wings and conducted formal interviews. I also interviewed the Prison Governor, the Wing Head and the Deputy Head. In total I conducted 19 formal interviews with prisoners, 13 with prison officers, 2 with representatives of middle management and 1 with a senior manager. All but one of the formal interviews were recorded and transcribed, and I systematically made notes of participantobservations from both fieldwork phases.

Building trust from a third position

To illustrate the challenge of building trust as an ethnographic prison researcher, below I include a field note extract of my conversation with one prisoner, Samuel, along with a brief note on the staff discovery of his creative approach to avoid testing positive for drugs.
Thursday evening I meet Samuel in the kitchen. His pupils are expanded. He has obviously taken drugs. Samuel tells me he is going on weekend leave the next day, i.e. Friday. Samuel: I bet I have to make a specimen. Interviewer: You have to get hold of some clean urine then? Samuel assures me that getting hold of clean urine is no problem, he actually produces it himself: All you do is empty a cigarette, put the tobacco in a coffee filter together with salt and pour water through the filter. That makes it look like urine. Billy (i.e. another prisoner) was caught using this technique. He used a tiny bag to contain the liquid. He got five days for it (i.e. in solitary confinement). I am clever, although everybody (i.e. other prisoners) thinks I am mad. I use a syringe, without a needle that is, and I pour the liquid into it, hide the syringe at the left side of my prick and release it. Then you will not notice it in the mirror. You just have to pretend you have problems urinating. That makes them (i.e. officers) feel uneasy. After all it is not the most exciting part of their job to oversee us producing specimen . . . Thus far I have never tested positive for drugs. Interviewer: Your technique sounds complicated. Samuel: Yeah, but that is the rule of the game. Samuel and I continue talking for a while before Samuel is locked up and I leave prison.

Three days after my conversation with Samuel, I check into the office and spot Samuels name on the list of prisoners in solitary confinement. I learn that Samuel was caught cheating with the specimen on Friday as he was about to go on leave. I panic as I fear Samuel will think of me as an informer; a person he and other prisoners will, therefore, not be able to share their everyday life with in the future. I am terrified of losing the rapport and trust that I had gradually and painfully built 310
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Nielsen: Pains and Possibilities in Prison with prisoners during months of hard work and, thereby, also my access to data. I am afraid of being judged and condemned by the same criteria that prisoners apply to each other. In recalling prisoners initial reaction to my presence where they would hide mobile phones and talk would discontinue when I showed up, I had come a long way. By continuously assuring them about my confidentiality and systematically ignoring the presence of mobile phones, drugs or other illegal activities, with time prisoners took fewer precautions in my presence. At the time when Samuel and I meet in the kitchen, prisoners would regularly be on the phone in my presence, exchange information about illegal activities and make comments such as: remember, you have to observe your professional secrecy. Despite the increasingly relaxed behaviour of prisoners I decide, nevertheless, to explain the unfortunate situation to the prisoner spokesman on the wing and some of the long-term prisoners whom I have known since I commenced my fieldwork. They respond by saying that a situation like this was bound to happen. Furthermore, they assure me that they have not heard any negative talk, so far, and will explain my situation if they do. When I explain the coincidence to Samuel, he tells me it is OK but we never talk again. Whether this is due to resentment, him leaving prison shortly after or a coincidence I do not know. Although the focus of my research was not on crime but on the relationship between prison officers and prisoners, observations made by the criminologist Ferrell on researching crime and criminality resonate with my experiences in prison. Ferrell notes that whether through direct participation in illegal activities, witnessing criminal behaviour or simply the knowledge that constructs them as accomplices to crime, criminological field researchers have regularly crossed the lines of legality in developing important and influential accounts of crime and criminality (Ferrell, 1998: 24). By virtue of my everyday presence in prison I could not avoid getting information about criminal activities such as drug dealing or taking and the related coping strategies of prisoners, like Samuel, who regularly took drugs. As my exchange with Samuel illustrates, I became involved as I accessed information, and I ran the risk of being perceived as an informer; a risk which ultimately could imply losing access to my informants and my field. In institutionalizing my presence on the wing among prisoners I continuously had to demonstrate my trustworthiness. Simultaneously, I was aware that I would be unable to control the occurrence of incidents that could raise doubt about my intentions similar to the one where Samuel gets caught cheating just after he has confided in me how he is planning to circumvent the monitoring of his drug use. The interconnections between deviance, law, crime, criminal justice systems and field research are complex, and the challenge of simultaneously interacting with and observing officers and prisoners while building some degree of trust with both groups was significant. This was exacerbated when prisoners who knew me were released, new prisoners arrived or they moved between the wings and I had to introduce myself again. It was a balancing act where I had to demonstrate that I was not investigating crime but collecting information about everyday life in prison where criminal activity constituted only one of many parameters that shaped daily interaction. In addition to ignoring ongoing criminal activities in prison, I sought to do this by focusing my attention on other aspects of prisoners lives and by primarily asking general questions about crime, criminal conduct and hierarchies. In so doing, I sensed the presence of crime and the many precautions that prisoners made to circumvent house rules and the law. To safeguard trust and my access to the field, however, I had to avoid exploring ongoing criminal activity in great detail; a compromise that points to possible limitations in my material. In a similar vein, there were compromises I chose to make in terms of the kind of data I ended up collecting from staff and that might have influenced the insights into the officer job that my analysis provides. The kind of information I increasingly would refrain from accessing related 311
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Acta Sociologica 53(4) to what Hannah, one member of staff, talks about in the interview extract below when she describes how staff regularly plan and organize raids to search the prison for drugs, alcohol and other illegal items.
Hannah: ...I will probably volunteer as an organizer (i.e. of raids). I have done it before, and it is quite different from the cell searches that we conduct during the week. This (i.e. the raids) is a kind of event where we turn everything up-side down, where we are plenty of staff and bring dogs along ... you are mentally prepared to work in depth, make the extra time and effort that such an operation requires. Interviewer: If you happen to be planning a raid I would like to know, I acknowledge, of course, that it must be kept confidential. Hannah: Yeah, but, yeah it does certainly require that it is kept a secret. Interviewer: Yes, otherwise it would not work, would it? Hannah: Sure, unfortunately we have had to experience that the hard way. Interviewer: Yeah? Hannah: We arrived (i.e. in prison) around 10 pm. And they (i.e. the prisoners) stood there waiting for us in the (red. wing) kitchen. Interviewer: Really? Hannah: Yes, sadly enough that is what happened. It is years back now. Interviewer: Did you find out what happened? Hannah: Well, a staff member must have leaked information... Interviewer: Did you find out who? Hannah: No, not entirely, although one had an idea who it might have been. That was such bad behaviour and you (i.e. staff who participated) feel ridiculous.

During my fieldwork period security events were organized that were similar to the one Hannah describes, but I never closely observed one as originally intended. In following Hannahs frame of thinking I realized how sensitive these kinds of operation were, and how easily I could end up in a situation where I might be accused of leaking information because compared to most staff I openly spent a considerable amount of time hanging out on the wings with prisoners. When tension arose I would therefore either leave or seek a somewhat neutral position, staying away from the immediacy of any trouble. Despite such care I would still encounter situations where I ran the risk of being misunderstood or of losing the trust I had built in relation to staff. Such a situation occurred the day when one prisoner whom I knew quite well was told that he could leave on probation. Coincidentally I see him (i.e. the prisoner) by the gate with a trolley full of large plastic bags and a few boxes preparing his departure. Surprised by his early release he is ecstatic. When I approach him by the prison gate to say goodbye he surprises me and gives me a hug saying; I am a free man now, I can do this. Overwhelmed by his friendly and happy gesture I hardly get to wish him good luck before apprehension takes over. Having been told endless stories by staff about the importance of maintaining a professional distance, not getting intimate with prisoners, not raising false expectations, etc., here I am hugging a prisoner right in front of all front gate cameras that officers have access to on screens in the office. I fear staff will think of me as having taken sides and therefore as not observing my professional impartiality and the code of conduct that we (i.e. officers and I) have agreed to prior to the commencement of my fieldwork. Among other things, I promised to dress in clothes that were not too feminine, not wearing make-up or appearing inviting sensible and reasonable requests that I have also observed in other, similar, fieldwork situations that require cultural and situational sensitivity. I fear that staff observing me from the security screens will think I have not honoured the privileged position and prison access I had been granted and worked to obtain; a position where I could move around prison without alarm or keys and with access both to officers and prisoners. 312
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Nielsen: Pains and Possibilities in Prison

Partial impartiality
Ferrell notes that where conflict between legal authorities and criminals not only predates the researchers participation, but pervades the situations within which the researcher operates, there is little chance of having it both ways, of working honestly, openly and empathetically with both criminals and legal control agents. Time and again researchers must align themselves more with one group than with the other, and then must live out, at least temporarily, a decision as to whose side they are on (Ferrell, 1998: 33). I only partly agree with Ferrell. I believe that the extent to which a researcher is working honestly and openly depends on the scope of the research, and the extent to which the fieldwork collaboration and conditions are transparently set out by both the researcher and key stakeholders at commencement of the fieldwork period. Furthermore, in working ethnographically in prison, like I did, you do not necessarily choose sides but plan your presence knowing that this requires a shifting engagement and positioning. It is an engagement and positioning that goes beyond official and jurisdictional definitions of groups, and where some people trust and share aspects of their world with you, as a researcher, while other people do not, depending on personality, social positioning in a broader sense, rapport and experience. Such shifting engagement and positioning becomes an entry point to the field characterized by what I call partial impartiality. As in other social settings, physical locations and social relations are not neutral in prison and although you seek to emphasize impartiality, your impartiality is constantly challenged. When interacting with prisoners and officers you inevitably get access to information that temporarily position you as a kind of insider because you possess insiders knowledge, like I had knowledge of Samuels planned trick or staff decisions regarding, e.g. cell searches or other planned events in prison. And in carrying insider knowledge and in engaging with both officers and prisoners, as I did, the tensions and dramas of everyday life in prison include and affect the researcher involved. While moving between different social positions typically comes with ethnographic fieldwork (see, e.g., Kondo, 1990; Hasse, 1995; Ergun and Erdemir, 2010), the level and kind of tension that characterize such movement in diverse fieldwork contexts differ. In conducting participantobservation among officers and prisoners in a prison, like the one I observed in this study, moving between positions is strenuous because these positions are symbolically charged and often ill-assorted. Although you claim impartiality as a researcher, in practice you constantly move between different positions that temporarily make you partially engaged. It is from such changing positions that a researcher, as an individual, evolves with the social in a subtle interplay in which the researcher must make an effort to address the mutuality of the whole and the part in whatever way these are defined (Hastrup, 2005: 13840). In my case this led to an acknowledgement of the importance of discretion, the relativity and diversity that characterized relationships in prison and also the uncertainty that goes with it. Inspired by lessons generated from other prison researchers who have emphasized the importance of seeking to divide, as evenly as possible, research time and effort between staff and prisoners (Liebling, 1999: 1556), I sought to divide my time and attention as evenly as I could. Despite these efforts I was nevertheless confronted by challenges similar to those outlined by the criminologist Alison Liebling, i.e. a sensation of not being able to break down barriers and gain the full trust of prisoners while simultaneously experiencing that I did not have enough contact with staff (Liebling, 1999: 155). While Liebling relates this to a question of having sufficient time, I believe that my feeling of insufficiency in terms of trust and time reflected my temporary presence and position. I was betwixt and between officers and prisoners, carrying confidential information across borders of symbolically 313
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Acta Sociologica 53(4) charged locations defined by the jurisdictional split, among others. I was an involved outsider with partial impartiality. This liminal position that is defined as in between, and yet involved, is paradoxical. Simultaneously, it involves inside and outside engagements and positioning; engagements and positioning I experienced as one strain of conducting fieldwork in prison.

Navigating reality: Strains of managing confidentiality

If allegory is the art of meaning something other and more than what is being said (Law, 2004: 88), and representation is allegory because it comes out of something other and more than the reality it seeks to describe (Law, 2004: 89), I unfold extracts from my field notes allegorically in this section. As allegory, the detailed content of the extracts is less important than what they allude to and represent. As allegory they allude to what I consider important epistemological issues relating to knowledge and positioning, data access and ontology of relationships. To provide a break from everyday life inside prison and expose prisoners to life outside, outings are organized regularly for small groups of prisoners accompanied, typically, by one officer. Such outings may be initiated by prisoners with assistance from one or more officers or vice versa. Subsidized by the prison and formally approved by management, these outings require initiative, organizing skills, effort and a sense of local politics. A number of house rules determine what kinds of outings are considered acceptable. Outings classified as luxurious are, for example, not endorsed. What exactly luxurious outings are is not always entirely clear, however, and therefore the Outing Endorsement Manager has to determine what she considers appropriate in relation to each outing before it is finally approved. The following extracts from my field notes illustrate the kind of data I would typically access as an everyday participant observer; in this case, information about a planned outing.
Prisoner A At midday I meet Prisoner A, who enthusiastically tells me how they (i.e. a relatively small group of prisoners and one officer) are going on an outing in the afternoon. First they will visit a couple of local sights and then they will close the day at a restaurant where they will pay the equivalent of approximately 40 per person for a nice dinner. A adds that Prisoner C (one participant) has cancelled because he just received a large bill equivalent to approximately 8,000. Prisoner B Past midday I meet Prisoner B, who is furious because the outing that everybody thought was endorsed has been cancelled. He tells me that Officer 1, who was originally going, was now unwell and therefore unable to come, but that Officer 2 had volunteered to accompany the group instead. B also tells me that when Officer 2 asked for permission to go instead of Officer 1, the Outing Endorsement Manager suddenly decided to cancel the trip altogether. The Outing Endorsement Manager I am in the office of the Outing Endorsement Manager and not sure why the outing has been cancelled. I decide to make an inquiry without giving away details of the trip, as I am not entirely sure what the Outing Endorsement Manager has been told by other stakeholders. The Outing Endorsement Manager explains that she has cancelled the outing because Officer 2 says it involves a visit to a restaurant which she (i.e. the Outing Endorsement Manager) considers luxurious and also inappropriate because only a minority of prisoners can afford to participate. The Outing Endorsement Manager lets me know she finds the outing and everything surrounding it rather strange. First, in the description of the outing, it states that the outing is a visit to a cinema, which is what she initially endorsed. Second, she wonders why Officer 1 who is unwell cannot find anybody to substitute for her. And third, she finds it puzzling that Officer 2 chooses to propose he accompanies

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Nielsen: Pains and Possibilities in Prison

prisoners on the outing instead of helping out Officer 1, who is on duty, despite being unwell, and who therefore needs a substitute. I agree it sounds somehow strange. Prisoner C At the other end of the prison I pass Prisoner C, who cheerfully tells me they (i.e. a group of prisoners) are going to a nice restaurant in the afternoon. Officer 2 As I am checking out, I meet Officer 2, who tells me that he is also heading home. He is not willing to wait any longer for possible changes relating to the outing. He says he finds the episode (i.e. the outing and the organization of it) confusing. Prisoner B I am on my way out of the prison when I once again meet Prisoner B, who confides in me that in an attempt to persuade Officer 2 to go on the outing, Officer 1 had told Officer 2 that he (Officer 2) would get a superb menu at the restaurant. With a sly and informed attitude, Prisoner B adds that he and Prisoner A had cleverly managed the participation of prisoners in relation to the outing by telling them they had to pay the equivalent of 40 for the meal, which meant that they basically got rid of all prisoners who could not afford to pay and who they did not want to come. In reality, however, they only had to pay 10.

As should be evident, each account adds new and surprising insights into the organization and content of the outing. What was initially a cinema trip turned out to be a tour to local sights and a nice restaurant or vice versa depending on where you first got information about the outing. What should be an outing ideally accessible to a broad segment of the prisoner population turned out to be a carefully planned and exclusive event attended only by a minority. In addition, what an officer would be expected to do, according to officer codes of conduct; namely maintaining officer solidarity versus all outside groups and showing positive concern for fellow officers (Kauffman, 1988: 11014) appeared not to apply to Officer 2s take on things: as Officer 2 was heading home, Officer 1 was unwell and remained so while on duty. Furthermore, for a person with limited knowledge of prison life, other surprising features could be added. It could, for example, be considered surprising that prisoners who you would initially think of as a relatively united and homogeneous group of stakeholders are in fact a very heterogeneous group in which some devise strategies to exclude and deceive others. These seemingly surprising insights allude to general features of everyday prison life that have been observed by other researchers as a diluted sense of solidarity among prisoners (Crewe, 2005: 177), and the existence of diverse and, at times contradictory, officer management approaches (Goffman, 1961; Gilbert, 1997; Liebling, 2004; Tait, 2009). It is in alluding to such general characteristics of prisoner group solidarity and officer working practices that my field note extracts unveil parts of their allegorical qualities. As a person exploring social relationships, the accounts left me with a series of questions that I was both puzzled by and curious to know the answers to. I had, for example, often observed Prisoner C with Prisoner A, and I was therefore puzzled by the fact that Prisoner C had cancelled his participation. After all, 10 is a relatively small amount to pay for an outing compared to a bill for 8000. Surely Prisoner C could afford that. Or was Prisoner C actually one of the prisoners told the price was 40? Was he meant to be excluded? But why should he be excluded as an outsider, if he was normally in company with Prisoner B, an insider, who was involved in organizing the outing? Had somebody moderated reality when they told me that Prisoner C cancelled his participation because he had just received a bill for 8000? In unravelling the social politics of the outing I was dealing with an object that wasnt fixed; an object that changed shape and problem as it moved through different contexts (Law, 2004: 81). 315
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Acta Sociologica 53(4) For example, prior to cancellation of the trip, an issue among a small group of prisoners was to launch an outing that was officially an open-to-all event while ensuring that a careful filtering of participants was in fact and informally in progress. As a result the outing would, in the presence of management and some staff members, have been presented as an open and non-luxurious event, whereas in relation to uninvited prisoners a different and more costly scenario was launched. Furthermore, as was also the case with the planned outing, uncertainty would typically prevail regarding which staff and prisoners would have insider and outsider knowledge in terms of the actual cost and possibly also the actual destination of the outing. It is, therefore, not surprising that the Outing Endorsing Manager and the officers involved found the organization of the outing, and its related logistics, confusing and strange. The multiple and, at times, inconsistent accounts that make a social event like the outing poses challenges in terms of observing professional ideals for confidentiality because information such as we are going on an outing to a restaurant and we are going on an outing to a cinema or the cost will be 40 or 10 becomes classified and sensitive as it changes hands. How do you ask questions or talk about seemingly innocent issues without giving away potentially exclusive information in a context where loyalty, solidarity and the distinction between inside and outside key players are unclear and where seemingly innocent information may lose its innocence when it changes hands? From this perspective, clarifying, friendly, conversing or other innocent kinds of exchange, involving a researcher like me, could give away information pointing to conflicting and secretive social positions, e.g. prisoners excluding and deceiving other prisoners, or staff who may or may not be aware of a planned outing to a fancy restaurant.

On the interface of truthfulness, lies and secrets

Lying is a slippery concept. Making a lie has consequences not only for the dupe but also for the liar, and after a while a statement that began as a lie may no longer fit easily under its initial rubric (Barnes, 1994: 1011). Lying is not simply the opposite of telling the truth, we may speak sincerely in good faith, thinking that we are telling the truth and yet be in error. Therefore, lies can consist of both true and false statements (Barnes, 1994: 12). As a researcher my role was not to establish one truth but to observe and acknowledge what appeared to be an institutionalized presence of multiple and often incompatible versions of reality in relation to which I would observe some being rooted in action and others as accounts only. Although I was not obliged to share information as, for example, loyalty to a friend may call for, my ethnographic presence required I asked questions and participated in everyday life and, in so doing, shared information. Simultaneously, and from an ethical point of view, I could not disseminate information indiscriminately, such as the information I got access to through my relationship with Samuel and the information I had access to through my observing presence at, for example, staff meetings. As I became familiar with the intricacies and complexities of everyday life in prison, I therefore found myself guarding and subtly disguising not only information that for obvious reasons was sensitive, but, increasingly, also information that appeared innocent, such as that related to the planned outing. In other words, I was working with discretion in a front or a half-way house between literal truth and bald lie, understood as either not speaking at all about delicate matters or as refurbishing facts so that they wore an innocent face (Albert, 1972: 90) intended not to create upheaval and safeguard my own position by guarding trust and observing confidentiality. My careful manoeuvring and shifting engagement and loyalties in everyday prison life made me a participant and co-producer of a multiple reality where not only I, but also officers and prisoners, were constantly guarding and disguising information, multiple loyalties and, ultimately, our own positions and agendas. 316
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Nielsen: Pains and Possibilities in Prison

Epitomizing relationships through guarding and disguising

The resemblance between my guarding and disguising, and the guarding and disguising of people who populated my field is not surprising. Although I was a researcher and outsider, I was involved, and in being involved I entered into relationships with people in the field that resembled and reflected their relationships as the sociologist Richard Jenkins observed when he noted that the situation of the fieldworker was characteristic of the conditions being studied (1994: 442). As the accounts of the outing illustrate, prisoners guard and disguise information from each other in order to safeguard their social position as, e.g. executives with social and economic capital going on an exclusive outing. At times the guarding and disguising are related to relatively harmless events, like an outing, other times the guarding and disguising relate to more delicate matters, e.g. the placing of drugs in somebodys cell which may have fatal implications when or if discovered. To manage the strains of being involved, some prisoners deliberately position themselves in ways so that like I they avoid getting access to information about illegal activities that might get them into trouble. As one prisoner noted: When people talk about where to hide drugs, well, already then will I leave the room, to avoid a situation where they may accuse me of stealing it. Among prisoners the guarding and disguising of information and positions not only relate to crime but also to the prisoner code of conduct that has a historic presence and legitimacy in its own right, and that emphasizes the importance of not interfering with other inmates, never ratting, never stealing and exploiting other prisoners, being a tough man and never siding with or showing respect for prison officers and their representatives (Sykes, 1958: 87108; Crewe, 2007: 125). Although the code represents an ideal and does not reflect everyday practice (Sykes, 1958: 81; Crewe, 2005: 126), prisoners have to strike a balance between nurturing their individual interests while appearing to be observing the prisoner code of conduct. I observe that this is typically done by blowing life into the code and its formality, e.g. when prisoners endorse sanctions against an informer whereby they show their hand and publicly seal prisoner solidarity and loyalty. The complexity of the constant guarding and disguising is exacerbated by the fact that prisoners simultaneously have to abide by internal prisoner power structures that unveil themselves in the privileges of some and deprivations of others. As the accounts of the outing also allude to, the guarding and disguising of self and other go beyond prisoners interaction with each other and extend into other spheres of life: their relationship with staff. Prisoners are aware that establishing a good relationship with an officer enhances their privileges and chances of obtaining positive reports (Crewe, 2009: 2). For prisoners expediting their release or simply improving their position, everyday life and status inside prison, carefully planned interaction with staff is therefore required. At times this results in avoidance of contact with staff, other times it involves developing rapport or signing up to, for example, educational programmes with the purpose of signalling a willingness to reform in order to fulfil formal criteria that may prepare an early release. From this perspective, there may be good reasons for interacting with staff. Therefore, closeness to staff does not necessarily mean that a prisoner is untrustworthy or violating the prisoner code of conduct, but it makes it hard to distinguish the reliable from the unreliable (Crewe, 2009: 5). Also staff are constantly on guard. As contact persons for designated prisoners and, therefore, involved in individual prisoners case work, and as managers of control and dynamic security, officers carefully observe their own presence and whereabouts in prison. To conduct quality case work and maintain security and control, officers depend on the collaboration, good will and some degree of bonding with prisoners. Simultaneously they have to interact with prisoners in a friendly and forthcoming way while appearing to comply with officer professional ideals laid out in their code of conduct that provides a road map to officer solidarity by demanding

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Acta Sociologica 53(4) a professional distance to prisoners and an explicit loyalty to staff, among others (Kauffman, 1988; Liebling, 2001; Crewe, 2007). For the most part officers and prisoners observe or pay lip-service to their codes of conduct to eliminate any doubt about their loyalty. In so doing, they relate to the codes to help themselves as individuals, as has been observed elsewhere (Jimerson and Oware, 2006: 445). I also hear them mentioning the codes when they describe themselves as officers and prisoners, respectively. When this happens the codes are means for officers and prisoners to craft themselves and their formal categories of being in prison. In other words, the codes do not predict behaviour. They are devices that officers and prisoners draw upon individually and collectively. As with the prisoner code of conduct, the officer code provides an ideal for social interaction in an environment that is far from ideal. It is an environment where discretion, trade-offs and compromises are necessary ingredients in the smooth running and intimacies of everyday prison life, often at the expense of officer accord, acceptance of each others management approaches and, ultimately, solidarity. I hear staff expressing, they cannot trust prisoners and that they become sceptical from working in prison. Staff also tell me they do not trust or are not comfortable with all of their colleagues, and that they lack confidence in management; articulations that are matched by uncertainty, worries and secrecy. As a result, the daily practices of officers are shaped by a careful guarding of management approaches and information about their own, their colleagues and prisoners everyday activities. It is against this background that the distinction is blurred between front and back, private and public or what John Law, inspired by Goffman (1959), has described as the division between reality and artifice or back and front stages (Law, 1994: 169). The social space in which everyday prison life unfolds is complex not just because accounts of reality are multiple, but also because the insideroutsider boundary is dynamic and relative. While a person may, in one situation, be taken as an outsider approached with caution, the same person may, in another situation, be taken as an insider who must be treated trustfully as was the case with my own shifting engagements and positioning as an ethnographic researcher. This relativity, I believe, is one factor that makes social relationships in prison challenging because it goes with uncertainty, guarding and a sense of non-coherence. Paradoxically, social relativity, simultaneously, provides a social necessity and comfort that keeps it all together by allowing flexibility, multiplicity and discretion to shape everyday life and making it possible. Relativity evokes multiple loyalties that are nursed in daily interactions and surface in accounts of reality that are often diverse and inconsistent. Similar to the accounts of the planned outing they seal and classify, disguise and guard relationships, loyalties and realities while, simultaneously, making them objects of inquiry and puzzle. Prisons are low-trust environments (Crewe, 2009: 5) where no one is as secure in the affections of a superior or inferior as to be able to afford the luxury of speaking or acting the unedited truth. This does not imply that friendships do not exist, empathy is not expressed or that people only and intentionally plan to deceive each other to secure themselves. It implies that it can be difficult to differentiate reliable from unreliable, friend from enemy, truth from dishonesty, trust from distrust and front from back. It also implies that formal categories such as officers, prisoners or managers that an outsider would think of as separate and distinct categories of beings are in fact intertwined in ways that challenge conventional ideas and ideals about relationships in prison. Furthermore, it points to the necessity of adopting a relative understanding of prison identity, relations and positioning. Finally, in demonstrating how such an understanding is linked to both insecurity and uncertainty and pains and possibilities, it adds new dimensions to conventional descriptions of the pains of imprisonment as deprivations beyond the loss of liberty (Sykes, 1958: 65). 318
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Nielsen: Pains and Possibilities in Prison

Concluding observations
This article is one answer to calls for descriptions of the complexity and emotional intricacy of conducting research in violent environments; descriptions that in relation to my ethnographic research have analytical potential that I have pursued simultaneously. The purpose of the article was therefore twofold: namely, to analyse what I experienced as the major challenges related to conducting ethnographic fieldwork in prison among officers and prisoners, and to use my scrutiny of these challenges to unfold defining features of relationships between staff and prisoners. One starting point for the analysis has been the embedded and embodied nature of the ethnographic fieldwork experience that by virtue of its engaging quality reflects and resembles characteristics of the conditions being studied. It is from this perspective, I have argued, that relational aspects influence the process by which facts are established. In analysing the strains and conditions of simultaneously conducting participant observation among officers and prisoners, I have argued that the building of trust and the adherence to professional confidentiality ideals constitute two separate, yet closely connected, challenges that characterize ethnographic prison research similar to mine. The challenge related to building trust concerns the liminal yet involved position of the ethnographic researcher. The involvement of the researcher is characterized by partial impartiality and shifting engagements and positioning as an informed outsider who is constantly challenged by being discredited as an informer and potentially losing rapport and access to the people who populate the field. I have also argued that while movement between different positions comes with ethnographic work, the level and kind of tension that characterize such movement differ. In a prison context where distrust, crime, secrecy, distress, anger and potentially also conflict characterize everyday life, such movement is strenuous because the shifting positions are symbolically charged and often ill-assorted. The challenge of adhering to confidentiality ideals has to do both with the involved and liminal nature of researching the officerprisoner relationship ethnographically, and the multiple and at times inconsistent versions of reality that dominate social life in prison. They are versions of reality that are challenging to manage while observing confidentiality because the ethnographic fieldworker, as an involved participant, becomes caught up in social politics and, in so being, may come to unveil versions of reality that have potentially damaging implications for people in the field. These straining challenges that evoke uncertainty and insecurity are partly beyond the control of the researcher who has, nevertheless, to constantly and consciously manage and attend to them by guarding and disguising engagements, information and positioning. The shifting engagements and positioning, however, simultaneously provide for the fieldwork experience and the opportunity to scrutinize relationships from multiple viewpoints. It is from this perspective that the challenges hold both pains and possibilities for the researcher. Furthermore, I have argued that my relationship with officers and prisoners, and the challenges that my presence in the field posed, epitomize local relationships in a broader sense. My insecurity, shifting engagements and my guarding of interaction, information and positioning mirrored the insecurity and the shifting engagements and guarding of people who populated the field. Officers and prisoners likewise watched their positions and the possibility of redefining or withdrawing from them in order to successfully manage relationships, alliances, personal agendas and a smooth flow of everyday life. Prisoners had to strike a balance between observing their ideal code of conduct by paying ` -vis prisoner internal social hierstrategic attention to it, manage their personal position vis-a archies and attend to their relationship with staff. While at times this resulted in an avoidance 319
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Acta Sociologica 53(4) of contact with staff altogether, other times it resulted in developing rapport and nursing the relationship to constructively facilitate staffprisoner daily cooperation and coexistence or positive reports. Also staff had to carefully and consciously manage their presence. Through a constant guiding and disguising of information, positioning and engagements, they sought to nurse officer solidarity and collaboration in an environment where their ideal code of conduct would be constantly threatened by daily compromises, rule-bending, internal conflicts over the management of daily life and their diverse kinds of relationships with prisoners. The guarding and disguising of staff also related to management who many did not trust or did not feel confident with. The guarding and disguising of both officers and prisoners were matched by feelings of insecurity and uncertainty that pointed to multiple loyalties and senses of solidarity which surfaced in inconsistent and ambiguous accounts of reality. These painful and straining emotions come with being and working in an intimate and violent environment, like a prison, where relationships, social and personal agendas are not always clear and where the distinction between insider and outsider, front and back, public and private, trustful and cautious, friend and enemy is relative and dynamic. Finally, I have argued that while social relativity provides uncertainty and multiple loyalties, it also makes possible the compromises, discretion and social flexibility that is required to ensure a tolerable humane flow of everyday prison life by providing possibilities for officers and prisoners to manage and attend to both personal and social agendas.

Notes
This research project was generously funded by the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation. I am especially grateful to Professor Margaretha Ja rvinen (Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen) for her constructive and incisive comments, and PhD Fellows Therese Heltberg and Morten Frederiksen (University of Copenhagen) for their insightful feedback on a draft version. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their inspiring commentary on the text. Finally, I am indebted to the Danish Prison and Probation Service for providing access to Danish penal institutions and to the Governor, officers, prisoners and managers who let me into their everyday life and made my fieldwork possible. 1. These wings did not offer any drug, alcohol or related treatment schemes. A special wing was established in the prison to cater for prisoners who voluntarily wanted to enrol in such programmes.

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Biographical Note: Malene Molding Nielsen is an anthropologist and PhD Fellow at the Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. While her PhD project explores the officerprisoner relationship, she is, as an anthropologist, specialized in the street life, learning and survival strategies among urban poor in East Africa. Address: Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, ster Farimagsgade 5, DK. 1014 Copenhagen K, Denmark. [email: malene@molding.dk]

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