Building on existing literature and disparate field experiences, this article forwards a thesis that status group memberships such as gender are not destiny for building access and rapport during fieldwork. Rather, the female researcher is an active participant in how she is perceived and received by informants, capable of negotiating socially constructed scripts that dominate the field setting to her analytic advantage. Analysis demonstrates how field settings deem various combinations of a researcher's attributes relevant and how researchers can strategically utilize established scripts regarding these status group memberships to ethically gain the trust of informants. Our comparative case study design uses the concept of “deploying gender” to build this more general, intersectional thesis on the role of a researcher's status group memberships for gaining rapport.

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Truth commissions are increasingly used as a transitional justice device in an attempt to move conflict-ridden societies to rights-based periods of stability. Using the case of El Salvador, this article finds that in cases where a truth commission does not directly engage public discourse, it cannot challenge the scripts that dominated the conflict period and therefore defined political actors, for instance as "insurgent" or "national security guarantor." In such cases, the truth commission may publicize "the facts" of the conflict period, but cannot facilitate transition to a new discourse that allows for true reconciliation and participatory governance.

In the 1990s the Cuban government instituted a “dual economy,” creating a dollar economy parallel to the peso economy as part of the reform package designed to address economic crisis. Expansion of the tourism sector as a dollar industry was central to efforts to raise revenue, as Cuba began limited and regulated interaction with the global capitalist economy. In an effort to quarantine Cubans from capitalist inequities, citizens were prohibited from accessing tourist facilities other than as workers. Some have referred to this as “tourist apartheid.” This study finds that “apartheid” is not an accurate classification of the system in Cuba; rather, the policy is comparable to an economic “firewall” designed to allow regulated engagement with the international capitalist community, while preventing ingress of capitalism domestically.

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