Fieldwork Dilemmas Research Articles

Rethinking reflexivity and positionality in researching happiness: Negotiating fieldwork dilemmas in Pakistan

This paper reflexively addresses the question of positionality from the experiences of conducting a doctoral project on happiness in Pakistan. It traces the challenges encountered by a woman researcher while interviewing women and men in a gender-segregated Pakistani society. The paper highlights the dilemmas of being insider and outsider and how these categories are shifted constantly while researching women and men in a social setting. The paper argues that gender and personal experiences create power relations between the researcher and informants that may influence the research process and outcomes. Further, the nuanced experiences of the researcher in the field turn our attention to the potential challenges, pitfalls as well as opportunities for researchers to be cognizant about one's positionality. The paper concludes with recommendations for future qualitative researchers to rethink the unexpected outcomes during the research process from the onset to be able to be better prepared to deal with them.

Becoming an ethnographer in a Physical Education Teacher Education culture: a challenging self-knowledge journey

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to uncover a transformative journey of a novice ethnographer, as she encountered the field of ethnographic research in a Physical Education Teacher Education culture. Particularly, through an analytical autoethnography, this study will present crucial experiences recognized as fieldwork dilemmas and encounter the strategies developed in order to address them.Data was generated through a field diary and a reflexive log from participant observations, Pre-service Teachers classes, formal and informal group meetings and conversations that occurred during the 8-month internship in a school context. The findings are mainly theorized through the Foucaultian lens of power and knowledge, governmentality, ethics and care of the self, Lofland et al. (2006) strategies of ‘Getting along’ in the fieldwork and the importance of the role of ‘Critical friends’. The conclusion emphasizes the novice ethnographer self-assumptions about fieldwork; confrontation with the researcher natural desire to intervein and how this aspect was managed by purposely unplugging those desires; how the ‘access’ bounces were understood and how they were used in her benefit to generate information; and, how she dealt with failure in materializing the initial expectations of the project. Finally, this study intends to motivate other novice ethnographers to do self-analysis through autoethnography during their research journey, in order to help gather better insights of their practice and enrich their research quality.

Researching a sensitive topic in an unstable environment

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore fieldwork dilemmas for a Pakhtun researcher, educated in the West, to research family or domestic violence in the unstable, hostile environment of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan.Design/methodology/approachA gender studies approach is here combined with masculinities studies, and a critical qualitative research methodology is used in this study.FindingsThe paper argues that unstable regions dominated by certain forms of masculinity require specific research approaches when conducting research and addressing a topic that is culturally taboo.Practical implicationsThe paper suggests how the insider–outsider dynamic plays out for researchers who come from a particular field and return to it under changed circumstances. It also indicates how a taboo topic in a context where direct questioning is not possible might be approached through the use of vignettes.Social implicationsThe paper suggests how the contradictory position of a masculinity, simultaneously bearing traces of the hegemonic and of marginalization, may be negotiated in the field.Originality/valueSocial research on the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan is rarely conducted and reported due to the unrest in this region. The paper thus contributes original insights from fieldwork carried out there. It also contributes to the limited but growing literature on conducting fieldwork in hostile environments.

Troubling Fieldwork: When Critical Events/Incidents in Classroom Fieldwork Provoke

In this autoethnography, I reflect on troubling fieldwork dilemmas I experienced while conducting qualitative research in a high school English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom. Here, I trouble—interrogate and raise questions about—two events involving JanCarlos, a student from Honduras. Using dialogue and reflexive internal dialogue, I present how the events were critical for him in that they altered the trajectory of his school experience and represented “critical incidents” in my research as they provoked emotional responses, interrupted my objective stance, and altered my interpretations. As I watched events unfold, I routinely asked the relational ethical question—“What should I do now?” In so doing, I critically reflect on fieldwork dilemmas and make transparent my position/power in creating knowledge.

Epistemological Ruptures: Flashback on Fieldwork Dilemmas While Doing Research on Friends at Home

While doing fieldwork at home and/or with people who are familiar can yield new knowledge, researchers using ethnographic techniques ought to first assume the role of apprentice and enact vulnerability before they can represent findings that represent what really happened. Doing otherwise can tarnish relationships or jeopardize a study. The history of narrative within ethnographic research is discussed as an introduction to the author’s own personal narrative, which is in the form of a flashback that illustrates the journey he embarked on in 2010 when he initiated dissertation research in his hometown of south Texas. It is here where he tells about the epistemological ruptures he encountered that were originally understood as fieldwork dilemmas only. He provides a discussion section where he shares how he make use of the lessons learned from writing a flashback in his current position of professor within a principal preparation program.

Field, ethics and self: negotiating methodology in a Hindu right wing camp

ABSTRACTThere is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution. (Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray)Feminist research methodology has made a strong case for emotionality as a legitimate part of not only the research process but also, as a valid addition to the data gathered. Research in risky environments presents tangible threats in the form of physical and mental exhaustion, and harm. It also becomes an avenue to confront emotions that go beyond the encounter with change. These emotions are extremely personal but contain within them the potential to threaten the researcher's mental well-being (in the form of trauma or shock), the ethics guiding the research or abandonment of the research project. This article concurs with Lal's [Lal, J. (1996). Situating locations: The politics of self, identity, and ‘other’ in living and writing the text. In D. L. Wolf (Ed.), Feminist dilemmas in fieldwork (pp. 185–214). Boulder, CO: Westview Press] assertion that we need to go beyond reflexivity during the research process and use it for ‘political action’. By using data collected during participant observation at a camp that was conducted by the women's group associated with the largest Hindu nationalist organisation in India, the article attempts to situate the emotion of guilt as an inseparable part of the research experience and makes a case for utilising it not only for more ethically sound research but also, an honest and empowering research process.

Sarah Turner, ed. Red Stamps and Gold Stars: Fieldwork Dilemmas in Upland Socialist Asia

Red Stamps and Gold Stars: Fieldwork in Upland Socialist AsiaSarah Turner, ed.Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2013, 320p.One of most striking changes observed while working in uplands of Laos over past decade is rapid growth in number of tourists, as ecotourism and minority cultural experiences become increasingly popular. The opening of these areas to tourism seems to indicate that a significant barrier has been removed in socialist countries of mainland Southeast Asia. Recognition of cash income that can be derived from tourism has certainly made region's landscapes and people more accessible to those who are interested. With political stability and economic opening, researchers' access to these regions has also become easier over decades. However, as Red Stamps and Gold Stars: Fieldwork in Upland Socialist Asia illustrates, challenges to conducting ethnographic research in this region remain formidable.This volume's most valuable contribution is way it unfolds and then fills in framework of dilemma. The chapters are a rich selection of many difficulties that ethnography faces in this region, although authors come at their studies from primarily anthropology and geography. In addition to well-known problems associated with spending extended time in places that are difficult to travel to and lack many of basics that are taken for granted in researchers' home countries, at center of these personal stories is political minefield that one must navigate in order to get approval for, carry out, and maintain relationships within, field-based research within socialist administrative structures of Vietnam, China, and Laos. Here, uplands means minorities, and this immediately puts us in a politically sensitive landscape of extreme complexity. Not only is it difficult for researchers to get there and do their work, but also it is risky and dangerous for local people, including both villagers and officials, to participate in telling of local stories and writing of ethnography.Relationships with officials come out in all stories. In different ways, we learn how quickly loses its salience when we start to approach field, as Communist Party and line ministries often tell us very different things. These two hands of the government frequently do not know what each other is doing, perhaps pointing to an inherent tension between red stamp and gold star. Indeed, fact that there is never one monolithic cannot be emphasized enough in these countries.Neither is boundary between and citizen obvious or reliable. Arriving in village, our informants often become our friends, and may also be official representatives of some part of officialdom. The way we perceive our roles and responsibilities, across personal and professional divide, is a source of ongoing stress. The chapters of this book offer new insights on old question of how one embeds oneself in a community, striving to observe from as close a vantage point as possible, yet struggles to maintain some sort of objectivity in those observations.The 15 chapters of fieldwork dilemma are organized into three sections, which provide an introduction to book's approach, an engaging body of case study reflections, and final discussion of positionality project in this specific region. In Part 1 Heading to Field, Sarah Turner sets stage with Dilemmas and Detours: Fieldwork with Ethnic Minorities in Upland Southwest China, Vietnam, and Laos, introducing us to tradition of reflexive discussion of position of field researcher that has grown and deepened since 1980s. Jean Michaud then provides a review of minority policies in three countries in Comrades of Minority Policy in China, Vietnam, and Laos, taking us through pre-Socialist, core-Socialist, and reform eras. …

Red Stamps and Gold Stars: Fieldwork Dilemmas in Upland Southeast Asia

Red Stamps and Gold Stars: Fieldwork Dilemmas in Upland Southeast Asia

Trust, Access and Sensitive Boundaries between ‘Public’ and ‘Private’: A Returning Insider's Experience of Research in Bulgaria

The article argues that social researchers need a critical, locally situated and historically informed understanding of the categories of ‘public’ and ‘private’, in particular when carrying out research in post-socialist Eastern Europe. Drawing on an ethnographic study of the working lives of Bulgarian maritime workers, the article discusses a range of ethical fieldwork dilemmas encountered while negotiating field access, maintaining relations with gatekeepers, recruiting participants, establishing rapport, interviewing, gaining access to documentary evidence and exiting the field. The analysis focuses on the conceptual and practical boundaries between the ‘public’ and the ‘private’ and highlights the entanglement of the public and private spheres. The notion of ‘returning insider’ is developed and the implications of the returning insider's positionality are discussed in Bulgarian post-socialist context.

Red Stamps and Gold Stars: Fieldwork Dilemmas in Upland Socialist Asia

Red Stamps and Gold Stars: Fieldwork Dilemmas in Upland Socialist Asia

Intergenerational Perspectives on Education and Employment in the Zambian Copperbelt

Previous articleNext article No AccessIntergenerational Perspectives on Education and Employment in the Zambian CopperbeltMonisha BajajMonisha Bajaj Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Comparative Education Review Volume 54, Number 2May 2010 Sponsored by the Comparative and International Education Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/651138 Views: 129Total views on this site Citations: 16Citations are reported from Crossref History © 2010 by the Comparative and International Education Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Taeko Okitsu, D. Brent Edwards, Peggy Mwanza, Scott Miller Low-fee private preschools as the symbol of imagined ‘modernity’? – Parental perspectives on early childhood care and education (ECCE) in an urban informal settlement in Zambia, International Journal of Educational Development 97 (Mar 2023): 102723.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2022.102723Brendan P. Carmody Zambia’s Poorest Progressively Left Behind: Well-Being Denied, (Apr 2022).https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95570 Bibliography, (May 2020): 149–162.https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78756-559-320201009Amita Chudgar, Youngran Kim, Alyssa Morley, Jutaro Sakamoto Association between completing secondary education and adulthood outcomes in Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda, International Journal of Educational Development 68 (Jul 2019): 35–44.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2019.04.008James Underwood, Thanh Truong Conceptualising Teachers’ Knowledge when Crossing National Boundaries, Polish Journal of Educational Studies 72, no.11 (Apr 2020): 145–161.https://doi.org/10.2478/poljes-2019-0010Susanne Ress Race as a Political Issue in Brazilian South-South Cooperation in Higher Education, Comparative Education Review 62, no.33 (Jun 2018): 409–428.https://doi.org/10.1086/698307Karen Ross Untangling the Intervention-Context Dyad through Horizontal Comparison: Examples from Israeli Peacebuilding Organizations, Comparative Education Review 61, no.22 (Mar 2017): 327–353.https://doi.org/10.1086/691092Clive Harber Educational Outcomes, (Jul 2017): 229–256.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57382-3_11Laura Vega, Monisha Bajaj The right to education in protracted conflict: teachers’ experiences in non-formal education in Colombia, Globalisation, Societies and Education 14, no.33 (Jun 2016): 358–373.https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2015.1121380Katherine V Gough, Francis Chigunta, Thilde Langevang Expanding the scales and domains of (in)security: Youth employment in urban Zambia, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 48, no.22 (Nov 2015): 348–366.https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X15613793Alla Korzh Fieldwork Dilemmas, (Jan 2015): 241–259.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6300-052-9_12Matthew A.M. Thomas, Carolyn M. Thomas, Elisabeth E. Lefebvre Dissecting the teacher monolith: Experiences of beginning basic school teachers in Zambia, International Journal of Educational Development 38 (Sep 2014): 37–46.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2014.05.006Kristin D. Phillips Dividing the Labor of Development: Education and Participation in Rural Tanzania, Comparative Education Review 57, no.44 (Jul 2015): 637–661.https://doi.org/10.1086/671795Kim Korinek and Sureeporn Punpuing The Effect of Household and Community on School Attrition: An Analysis of Thai Youth, Comparative Education Review 56, no.33 (Jul 2015): 474–510.https://doi.org/10.1086/666911Carolyn M. Thomas, Matthew A.M. Thomas Zambian teachers’ perceptions of expert teaching: resourcefulness, punctuality, and sobriety, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 25, no.55 (Aug 2012): 583–600.https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2011.605077Diane Brook Napier African socialism, post-colonial development, and education: Change and continuity in the post-socialist era, (Mar 2015): 369–399.https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-3679(2010)0000014017

Becoming a Nonexpert and Other Strategies for Managing Fieldwork Dilemmas in the Criminal Justice System

In this article, the author presents three fieldwork strategies for managing role conflict in criminal justice settings. One of the most critical issues for ethnographers immersed in fieldwork is balancing the tension between the researcher and participant-observation roles. Ethnographers in criminal justice settings as well as other types of street-level bureaucracies are commonly confronted with dilemmas involving physical risk, highly sensitive data, marginalized clientele, and the exploitive use of power and domination by institutional gatekeepers. Researchers venturing into challenging fieldwork settings, such as criminal justice environments, must be highly attuned to the constraints and opportunities for collecting data. The author argues that these strategies can augment ethnographers' “data collection toolkit” to better address fieldwork problems. In addition, deploying these strategies can help to reveal unforeseen findings in the study.

Interviewing Fathers: Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork

This paper explores the dilemmas encountered carrying out empirical research using a feminist methodological approach. Specifically, I recount my experiences while undertaking qualitative research, in which I explored the experiences of employed mothers in the UK. At the beginning of my study, I adopted a feminist ‘position’. This paper explains how an initial decision to exclude men from the research sample proved more complex than anticipated, and was eventually reversed. The issue of equality between the researcher and participants is discussed and the question of whether the approach of the researcher should change, depending on the gender of the respondents, is considered. It is suggested that the experience of doing fieldwork may be different from the outcomes anticipated from the literature. In this case, the behaviour of male interviewees during the interview was very similar to that of female interviewees. Men were just as co-operative and articulate as women. This was not predicted on the basis of some of the existing literature on woman-to-man interviews. It is suggested that the application of epistemology in the field, especially in relation to woman-to-man interviewing, is complex, but that cross gender interviewing may be beneficial in terms of research outcomes.

Collaboration Across Borders: Moving Beyond Positionality

Discussions about collaborative spaces in postcolonial feminist and geographical analyses have often hinged on questions of positionality, reflexivity and identity, largely in relation to the politics of representation. Such approaches have often led to an impasse, especially in fieldwork‐based feminist research, where reflexivity has mainly focused on examining the identities of the individual researcher rather than on the ways in which those identities intersect with institutional, geopolitical and material aspects of their positionality. This kind of identity‐based reflexivity does not distinguish systematically between the ethical, ontological and epistemological aspects of fieldwork dilemmas; it also fails to adequately address how our ability to align our theoretical priorities with the concerns of communities whose struggles we want to advance is connected to the opportunities, constraints and values embedded in our academic institutions. This article takes this discussion forward by arguing for a postcolonial and transnational feminist praxis that focuses explicitly and deliberately on (a) conceptualising and implementing collaborative efforts that insist on crossing multiple and difficult borders; (b) the sites, strategies and skills deployed to produce such collaborations; and (c) the specific processes through which such collaborations can find their form, content and meaning. To ground this discussion, I draw upon two collaborative initiatives that I have begun recently in the state of Uttar Pradesh, north India.

Fieldwork Dilemmas: Anthropologists in Postsocialist States

Focusing on former socialist states in Eastern Europe, the contributors disclose the political and physical dangers inherent in field research. They reveal how communities undergo political and economic dislocations, plummeting living standards, and ethnic and nationalist violence.

Altered States: Ethnographies of Transition in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union; Fieldwork Dilemmas: Anthropologists in Post‐Socialist States

Altered States: Ethnographies of Transition in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. Daphne Berdahl. Matti Bunzl. and Martha Lampland. Editors. Ann Arbor. University ofMichigan PTess. 2000 252 pp. 0‐472‐08617Fieldwork Dilemmas: Anthropologists in Post‐Socialist States. Hermine G. De Soto and Nora Dudwick. Editors. Madison. University of Wisconsin Press.2000. 250 pp. 0‐299‐16374‐1

Book Reviews

Fieldwork Dilemmas: Anthropologists in Postsocialist States. Hermine G. De Soto and Nora Dudwick. eds. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000. xi. 250 pp., photographs, references, index.

Fieldwork Dilemmas: Anthropologists in Postsocialist States by H. G. De Soto N. Dudwick (review)

REVIEWS 591 Kazak Soviet Socialist Republic'. Both chapters are brief. The first relies heavily on statisticaldescription, and includes two ratherinformation-sparse maps. As these are the only maps in the book, it should be said that more details would have been welcome. Unless readers have a good grasp of Kazakstan'sgeography there are passageswhere they will need to consult an atlas. The chapter on perestroikamakes some interestingpoints for example, that housing investmentwas almost a thirdof total investmentin i 986-go but often they are not clearlypresented, and the book would have benefited from tougherediting. Parttwo of the book is entitled 'The New National Economy: the Learning Curve', and mainly covers the end of the rouble and the introduction of the tenge. The chapteron the end of the roubleis illuminating,but the chapteron the tenge and the new reform course is unbalanced by the insertion of a sixpage dynamic model of a large-scale enterprise, which is only of limited relevance to thistopic. Part three covers privatization and structural reforms in the industrial sector. There is a significantamount of detailed informationon sales of firms, though, as throughout the book the data beyond I996 is sparse. The style is descriptive, and the topic really needed more focus to repay readers'efforts with what in places is a rather rambling account. The discussion of restructuring is more accessible, though again the material is now rather dated. Part four covers a range of loosely connected issues: small and medium businesses; oil and gas developments; banking; foreign debt; agriculture; foreign trade; and finally the socio-economic implications of transition. It would have required much sterner editorial input to prevent this final part resemblinga bin-end of topics. Overall, despitesome interestingfacts,thisbook is not a majorcontribution to the topic. This is disappointing,as the area is intrinsicallyinteresting.The gap in thismarketis stillopen. Department ofEconomics andInternational Development C. W. LAWSON University ofBath De Soto, H. G., and Dudwick, N. (eds). Fieldwork Dilemmas: Anthropologists in Postsocialist States.University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, and London, 2000. Xi + 250 PP. Map. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $22.95 (paperback). THIS is a book that will benefit a wide readership. As Michael Herzfeld demonstratesin the 'Afterword',the questions askedare concerns beyond the bordersof post-socialiststatesand are revealingof the natureof anthropology as well. Fieldwork Dilemmas is well-constructed and works well as a coherent whole, the chaptersin conversationwith each other,common themesbrought out. While the obvious linkis sharedgeography, chronology and politics, this servesas a springboardformany other subjects:forexample, the difficultiesof working as both insider and outsider (or 'halfie')and how to maintain 'one's 592 SEER, 8o, 3, 2002 own moral and intellectual compass' in the face of rapid change (Dudwick, p. 14). Through these chapters, the reader develops an appreciation of the myriadproblemsof doing fieldwork,and at the same time, of itsgreatvalue in addingto our knowledgeof the world. 'Willyou be as generouswith your storiesas I have been with mine?'asked one of my own informant/friends. The fieldworker-informantintimacy that develops, even in a shortperiod, is a theme raisedin most chaptershere. The act of sitting down and listening is in itself a promise of reciprocity of some sort.What sortand how is left to be negotiated, part of the 'researchbargain' noted by Nora Dudwick (p. i i), distressingas well as enrichingand enabling. In partone, 'Postsocialismand the Fieldworkof War',Dudwick,Keith Brown, and Marko Zivkovic ask:When the informants'lives are in chaos and even physical danger, anticipated or present, does the researcher persist in deconstructing the national stories and myths, remain aloof, or act as advocate? This issueof whetheror how to shape one's worktowardsadvocacypersists throughout the book. Some insist that advocacy and academic research are two sides of the same coin, but for others it appears instead to be a magnet with twopolarsidesrepellingeach other.Likea magnet, thisdifficultequation may even attract something, namely trouble. As Dudwick, Brown and Zivkovicpoint out, all solutionsarepolitically-chargedand there islittleroom for anthropologicalshadesof grey in the vivid primarycoloursof war. Part two, 'Fieldworkersin the Postsocialist Field' includes nuanced and sensitive essaysby Hermine G. De Soto, Kathleen Kuehnast, Igor Barsegian and David G. Anderson. Each examines westerners doing fieldwork in countriesthatwere formerlyenemies, where the relationshipis stillpermeated by ideas of...

Fieldwork Dilemmas:Anthropologistsin PostsocialistStates. Edited by Hermine G. De Soto and Nora Dudwick. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000. 250 pp. $55.00 (cloth); $22.95 (paper).

"Fieldwork Dilemmas:Anthropologistsin PostsocialistStates. Edited by Hermine G. De Soto and Nora Dudwick. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000. 250 pp. $55.00 (cloth); $22.95 (paper)." published on 01 Jan 2002 by Brill | Schöningh.

Fieldwork Dilemmas: Anthropologists in Postsocialist States. Ed. Hermine G. DeSoto and Nora Dudwick. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000. xi, 252 pp. Bibliography. Index. Photographs. $55.00, hard bound. $22.95, paper.

Fieldwork Dilemmas: Anthropologists in Postsocialist States. Ed. Hermine G. DeSoto and Nora Dudwick. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000. xi, 252 pp. Bibliography. Index. Photographs. $55.00, hard bound. $22.95, paper.