The complexities of ‘otherness’: reflections on embodiment of a young White British woman engaged in cross-generation research involving older people in Indonesia

Abstract

If interviews are to be considered embodied experiences, than the potential influence of the embodied researcher must be explored. A focus on specific attributes such as age or ethnicity belies the complex and negotiated space that both researcher and participant inhabit simultaneously. Drawing on empirical research with stroke survivors in an ethnically mixed area of Indonesia, this paper highlights the importance of considering embodiment as a specific methodological concern. Three specific interactions are described and analysed, illustrating the active nature of the embodied researcher in narrative production and development. The intersectionality of embodied features is evident, alongside their fluctuating influence in time and place. These interactions draw attention to the need to consider the researcher within the interview process and the subsequent analysis and presentation of narrative findings. The paper concludes with a reinforcement of the importance of ongoing and meaningful reflexivity in research, a need to consider the researcher as the other participant, and specifically a call to engage with and present the dynamic nature of embodiment.

Perspectives on ageing, later life and ethnicity: ageing research in ethnic minority contexts

“…At the same time as the older trends continue, there is now also an increased recognition of the importance for academic thinking and research in the field of social gerontology to move beyond the ethnocentric White cultural lens ( see Torres 1999; Wray 2003a, 2003b) and the more problem-focused and essentialist understandings and conceptualisations that it tends to advance in relation to ethnicity ( see Torres 2006 , 2015 ). Hence, rather than treating ethnicity as well as age and ageing as being fixed, static and discrete categories, these need to be conceptualised and understood instead as being socially constructed and therefore as being fluid, changing and context-dependent ( see Norris 2015 ; Torres 2015 ; Zubair, Martin and Victor 2012 a ).…”

“…The particular ageing and later-life experiences of members of ethnic minority communities in the Western world can be identified as deserving special attention because of these minorities' often distinctive situations in terms of the higher levels of disadvantages, inequalities and exclusions experienced into old age compared with the dominant White ethnic majorities ( see Nazroo 2006; Nazroo et al 2004; Phillipson et al 2000; Yu 2000). Within their status as ethnic minorities and migrants, many of these populations experience living in countries where the dominant social policies, norms and discourses, in addition to the particular material and economic inequalities experienced, often further marginalise them by defining and constructing their specific experiences (including those of old age) in terms of their cultural difference or ethnic ‘otherness’ (Torres 2006; Warnes et al 2004; see also Zubair and Victor 2014, 2015). As Torres (2006) notes in the case of ethnic minority older people in Sweden, the type of attention received by this group, for example, has involved recognising or labelling them in terms of a specific homogenised social category, that of ‘elderly immigrants’.…”

“…Moreover, this engagement needs to be understood not in the narrow sense of merely a greater inclusion and visibility of ethnic minority older people within ageing research. While such inclusion is undoubtedly important, there is also a need for focusing a more critical eye on the currently dominant research agendas, frameworks and trends with respect to ethnic minority ageing research, in terms of how ethnic minority ageing and older people are conceptualised, understood and represented within this smaller body of gerontological literature ( see Phillipson 2015; Torres 2015; Zubair and Victor 2015). This critical appraisal of the current research frameworks should involve identification of new ways of looking at and understanding ethnicity in older age.…”

Moving towards a more inclusive patient and public involvement in health research paradigm: the incorporation of a trauma-informed intersectional analysis

“…Evidence shows that in some instances, past experiences of trauma may indeed be a driving motivator for certain researchers in the work they do, exemplified by the wounded healer paradigm [45] often discussed in the field of behavioural health sciences. In addition, even in areas of research where the researcher may not have directly experienced the health conditions being investigated, for example in the field of gerontology, stories shared by public research partners may in time be researchers’ own [46]. It is a reminder that researchers may have a personal connection with hopes and fears expressed by public research partners, and that stories of abuse, loneliness, racism, sexism, etc.…”

Att bygga en tillfällig allians – metodologiska frågor vid intervjuer med ensamkommande barn och unga

“…Att prata för andra kan alltså också handla om att prata i egen sak, vilket är något som behöver medvetandegöras. I reflektioner kring huruvida någon form av matchning bör göras mellan forskaren och informanten för att underlätta mer djuplodande data är exemplet etnicitet ett centralt område (Edwards, 1990;Collins, 1990;Norris, 2015;Bhopal, 2010). Hur kan man till exempel hävda att man ska göra någons röst hörd om man endast får tillgång till fragmenterade delar av personens historia?…”