Reflexivity: unmarried Japanese male interviewing married Japanese women about international marriage

Abstract

This article addresses the reflexive nature of research I conducted investigating the experiences of Japanese women who are married to Australian men and currently reside in Australia.It highlights how my positionality: my male gender and Japanese cultural identity, unmarried status and the perspective about the discourse on international marriage influenced the nature of the interview conversations and had an unexpected impact on my fieldwork generally. Considering positionality is not static or fixed, both insider and outsider status between researchers and the researched are not always clearly detached. Presumed advantage and disadvantaged attached to these statuses, therefore, needs to be scrutinized carefully. This article maintains that the insiderness and outsiderness of researchers and researched relationships were not always antithetical, but could work simultaneously making research both highly nuanced and ambiguous at times.

Language in fieldwork: Making visible the ethnographic impact of the researcher's linguistic fluency

“…Takeda (: 292) argues that his shared cultural background and experiences as a Japanese national in Australia enabled a ‘sidestepping’ of gender in his interviews with Australian‐based Japanese women. Recognising the weight of native language use (by both informant and researcher) in his interviews, he notes that native speaker fluency enabled an ease that would not have been possible in an English‐language discussion.…”

“…Recognising the weight of native language use (by both informant and researcher) in his interviews, he notes that native speaker fluency enabled an ease that would not have been possible in an English‐language discussion. However, he recognises that shared language could not fully bridge the gender gap, disallowing discussion of certain themes (Takeda : 291). Thus the interplay of language (shared) and gender (different) shapes Takeda's interaction with his informants, just as my language (different) and gender (shared) defined my interactions with the Japanese group.…”

The insider–outsider role of a Chinese researcher doing fieldwork in China: The implications of cultural context

“…Furthermore, Guillemin and Gillam (2004) claim that reflexivity is not a discrete entity; rather, it is an on-going and active process of critical reflection both on what knowledge has been produced (what do I know) and on how this knowledge comes into existence (how do I know what I know). Reflexivity allows us to “observe our feelings and positionality and the analysis of this dynamic becomes an important source of data” (Takeda, 2012: 286). Actually, reflexivity is a significant part of the process of knowledge production, especially in qualitative methodologies (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995).…”

Rethinking representation: negotiating positionality, power and space in the field

“…Autoethnography is a form of self-narrative that places the 'self' within a social context (Reed-Danahay 1997, 9) and it has been used to make sense of 'self' in relation to the 'significant others' as part of research projects (Chaitin 2004, 4). During the production of my autoethnographic text, I became aware of how my positionality as a local woman complicated the processes and directions of the research I was undertaking (Takeda 2012). During the production of my autoethnographic text, I became aware of how my positionality as a local woman complicated the processes and directions of the research I was undertaking (Takeda 2012).…”