Negotiating the field: rethinking ethnographic authority, experience and the frontiers of research

Abstract

This article derives from my own fieldwork experience as a female anthropologist working in the field of gender and male sexual dissidence. Taking my early fieldwork in the 1990s as a departure point, and drawing on my recent fieldwork with Spanish Lesbian, Gay, Transsexual and Bisexual activists, I reflect on the researcher's position, both in the field and in the construction of the field, through a discussion on ethnographic authority and management of the roles of insider/outsider. In adopting a critical perspective, I propose that the position of the researcher and of other actors in these social situations be continually and thoroughly negotiated, thus revealing the flexiblilty of the frontiers of/in research. This negotiation of positions is related to the complex process by which anthropological 'difference' is constructed, and to the dynamic configurations of ethnographic 'objects' and 'subjects' in fieldwork. Positions, alterations, intersections and negotiations are seen to be permeated by the rational and the emotional construction of 'otherness'.

My Stage: Participatory Theatre with Immigrant Women as a Decolonizing Method in Art-based Research

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Do Numbers Always Matter: Review of Research Paradigms in Social Work

“…Доцільно звернути увагу й на поширення етнографічних стратегій. Такі «польові» нотатки та спостереження дають змогу описати, приміром, як реалізується та чи інша інтервенція соціальної роботи, адже при застосуванні цієї стратегії фіксуються рутинні дії людей (фахівців, клієнтів, заявників тощо) у їхньому звичному середовищі, досліджуються характерні для респондентів або певної соціальної чи професійної групи поведінкові практики у звичних для них повсякденних умовах [8,20].…”

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