Tentacles of Ethnographic Conditions: Studying Biomedical Research in the Making at a High-Security Site

Cryobanks for biomedical research are high-security sites. After all, hundreds of thousands or millions of human-based biospecimens, associated data, and multiple biomedical and scientific promises are the inhabitants of such sites. Qualitative research on biobanks mainly focuses on donors’ perspectives, and long-term ethnographic accounts in biobanks are scarce. This chapter provides a reflexive account of an ethnographic study (2018–2020) in a biobank exploring cell manufacture and banking for immunotherapy in Spain by delving into the tentacles of ethnographic conditions. The chapter unpacks two ethnographic preconditions regarding the project design and the ethnographer's academic training locale. Then, it fleshes out the tentacles of two field access conditions, configuring the ethnography in the form of two formal agreements of non-disclosure and collaboration. It describes how some ethnographic conditions were arm wrestling with ethnographic fieldwork undesigned relationality and the effects it had during research and after it. This chapter aims to ignite a scholarly discussion on how collaboration and confidentiality are forged in contemporary ethnographic work and, more broadly, to activate a more explicit and honest reflection on ethnographic conditions tentacles.