Four Questions for Ethnographers Under Trumpian Authoritarianism

ABSTRACT This article examines evolving challenges and ethical dilemmas facing ethnographers working under intensifying authoritarianism in the United States. Because very little of what the United States is experiencing is new, my work here is primarily curatorial in nature, drawing upon the lessons offered by scholars across disciplines in the United States and beyond for whom ethnographic research in authoritarian contexts has always been the norm. Following my recent decision to withdraw a manuscript from publication due to potential repercussions to activist interlocutors, I outline four questions for U.S.‐based ethnographers navigating heightened surveillance, repression, and vulnerability to state violence. These questions focus on (1) how to listen differently in the field and make sense of silence amid eroding public trust, (2) how to look differently and use ethnography to refuse authoritarian chrononormalization of violence, (3) how to question one's own assumptions that exposure via research and publication will necessarily lead to change, and conversely (4) how unexamined refusal to publish may constitute acquiescence in advance. Through this work, I invite scholars to engage in a disciplined hesitation as we rethink the stakes, strategies, and limits of ethnographic work in this political moment.