Parliamentary Ethnography: The Challenges to Research in the Senate of Argentina for a Member of Staff
The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the advantages, obstacles, limitations and, mainly, the challenges to conduct research about an institution, in this case Senate of Argentina, that is the workplace of the scholar. As the researcher was a clerk at the Senate, which meant that carrying out an ethnography of parliamentary activities or of the senators was not straightforward, because could have genered suspicions among my colleagues. Parliamentary investigations require institutional approval, which is not always obtained. This investigation was carried out along 6 years without any formal authorization, despite the fact that the clerks, officials and authorities of the Senate were aware of it.
