On the precariousness of address: What narratives of being called White can tell us about researching and re/producing social categories in research.

Abstract

Social categories hold a steadfast place within social psychological research and theory. Reflecting on the use of social categories in everyday life as well as social psychological research and theory, this article critically interrogates the privileging of hegemonic Western ways of categorizing, addressing and locating people over how they are read and categorized in other socio-cultural contexts. This article draws on four excerpts of women narrating experiences of being called White, Oborɔnyi or mzungu (engl. foreigner, wanderer, White person) during their travels to the African continent. The article first excavates, phenomenologically, the precariousness of being addressed as White, Oborɔnyi or mzungu. Next, a reflexive account is presented to contemplate how racialization happens in and through the research process. By bringing together phenomenological interpretation and reflexivity, the article explores the limits of researcher and researched positionality in making sense of White as a precarious address, and argues for a view that the meaning of White is established in a four-way conversation between interviewee, African Other, interviewer and our own culture-specific inner eyes. The article thus advocates for scholars to give more attention to how our inner eyes limit how we name, describe and theorize our research.