Positionality
Identity, Standpoint and the Limits (and Possibilities) of Fieldwork
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.22607Keywords:
positionality, identity, subjectivity, fieldwork, Brazil, reflexivityAbstract
This article discusses the concept of positionality, which challenges the notion of a neutral, disembodied observer. For ethnographers, thinking about positionality means to attend to how fieldwork happens through interpersonal relationships that play out in complex and uneven social spaces. Drawing on examples from my own ethnographic fieldwork in Bahia, I consider how positionality is both limiting and enabling, and I address the challenges of writing about positionality in ways that enrich ethnographic description and analysis.
Downloads
References
Cabra, Martina 2020 Dialogical Ethnography. In Analyzing Group Interactions: A Guidebook for Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Methods, edited by Mattias Huber and Dominik Froehlich, 169–79. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367321116-19
Clifford, James 1983 On Ethnographic Authority. Representations 2: 118–46. https://doi.org/10.2307/2928386
Clifford, James, and George E. Marcus (eds) 1986 Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography: A School of American Research Advanced Seminar. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Escobar, Arturo 1993 The Limits of Reflexivity: Politics in Anthropology’s Post-“Writing Culture” Era. Journal of Anthropological Research 49: 377–91. https://doi.org/10.1086/jar.49.4.3630155
Harding, Sandra 1992 Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What is “Strong Objectivity?” The Centennial Review 36(3): 437–70.
Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar 2013 Laboratory Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Marcus, George E., and Michael M. J. Fischer 1986 A Crisis of Representation in the Human Sciences. In Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences, edited by George Marcus and Michael Fischer, 7–16. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wylie, Alison, Robert Figueroa and Sandra Harding 2003 Why Standpoint Matters. In Science and Other Cultures: Issues in Philosophies of Science and Technology, edited by Robert Figueroa and Sandra G. Harding, 26–48. New York: Routledge.
Further Reading
Bakas, Fiona Eva 2017 ‘A Beautiful Mess’: Reciprocity and Positionality in Gender and Tourism Research. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 33: 126–33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhtm.2017.09.009
Hoel, Nina 2013 Embodying the Field: A Researcher’s Reflections on Power Dynamics, Positionality and the Nature of Research Relationships. Fieldwork in Religion 8(1): 27–49. https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.v8i1.27
Meadow, Tey 2013 Studying Each Other: On Agency, Constraint, and Positionality in the Field. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 42(4): 466–81. https://doi.org/10.1177/
Miled, Neila 2019 Muslim Researcher Researching Muslim Youth: Reflexive Notes on Critical Ethnography, Positionality and Representation. Ethnography and Education 14(1): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/17457823.2017.1387063
Rabinow, Paul 2016 [1977] Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520933897
