Much of the literature on conducting fieldwork is received by research students in a polished and often sanitized style in which the realities of fieldwork are tidied up and presented in âpersuasive chunksâ passing through a filter from the field to the literature (Harrowell et al. 2018, p. 230). Surprisingly little of the mess or uncertainly that we encounter during our first few fieldwork experiences is reflected in the narratives researchers tell when returning from the field and writing up their findings. Many researchers tend to rationalize problems and bring to the fore achievements, leaving the messier and often embarrassing parts, or instances of failure , on the cutting room floor (Shore 2010; Jones and Evans 2011; Kay and Oldfield 2011). One reason for this might be that years of positivist-inspired thinking have ingrained themselves in social science research practice teaching researchers that impersonal, emotionless and neutral detachment underlies good research (England 1994).
The idea that researchers can detach themselves from their research and don an academic cloak of neutrality ignores the openness and culturally constructed nature of the social world which is, as England (1994, p. 81) points out, âpeppered with contradictions and complexities.â Many of the complexities that England describes here revolve around questions of positionality, a concept concerning where one stands in relation to âthe otherâ and in regard to the politics of knowledge construction (England 1994; Rose 1997; Merriam et al. 2001). In recent years, positionality has begun to assume a central position in the discourse surrounding research and methodology and, as a result, the recognition of the need to situate knowledge has seen an influx of studies which are devoted to reflexivity exploring and analyzing how researchers might better understand how their identity and research relationships affect data production.
My purpose in producing this edited volume is to add to the existing literature on positionality. For those questioning the decision to focus on an area that has amassed rather a large literature since the constructivist turn loosened the grip of positivism on social science research, the answer is simple. Many of the contributors to this volume found themselves facing challenges during their first fieldwork experiences, for which they struggled to find advice in the existing literature. These challenges revolved around issues of positionality, as well as access, and raised questions around identity , race , and gender such as: how does one cope with the feeling of failure in the field? What is a researcher to do when their path to potential fieldwork is blocked by the government of the country to which they are seeking access? And, how might a researcher interpret the effect that flirtatious behavior between the research participant and the researcher has on the quantity and quality of data produced? These questions, along with other issues around positionality and access, are discussed in this volume, which uses the fieldwork experiences of the contributing authors to address gaps in the existing literature and take the discussion of positionality in new directions.
The book contains case studies from doctoral research in Malawi, South Sudan, Kenya, South Africa, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Senegal, Namibia, and Uganda and represents the combined knowledge of nine researchers from the fields of anthropology, development, history, tourism and hospitality, and political science who all found themselves navigating around issues of positionality and access while conducting fieldwork in Africa. But, why focus only on Africa?
As more and more doctoral researchers, beyond the discipline of anthropology, choose to carry out fieldwork on the African continent, the rise in publications on the findings of such research has far surpassed the rather slender body of literature that focuses on the research process itself. For researchers from any discipline or background, the culmination of methodological and ethical issues that researchers might find themselves facing when conducting fieldwork in Africa can present challenges for academics of any discipline, level of experience, or background. This observation is one of the reasons why the editors of African Affairs, the top-ranked journal in African studies, decided recently to devote space in the journal to research notes focusing on methodological and ethical issues arising from fieldwork in Africa. This edited volume is produced with similar intentions, with this in mind, however, the themes analyzed here are in no way unique to the African field-site. The positionality challenges of conducting research in oneâs home country, the ways in which emotions, gender , and gatekeepers might affect data production , and the challenges of failed fieldwork, are all applicable to fieldwork carried out in other geographical locations, whether Africa or elsewhere.
This volume is dedicated to the ethical and emotional challenges that accompany fieldwork. It demonstrates how who we are shapes what we research and the knowledge we produce. All of the chapters collected here analyze different aspects of positionality gleaned from first-hand experience of how our subjective positions affect every stage of the research processes, and focus on the following questions:
- 1.What effect do our identity, role, and position as a researcher have on the ways in which our research subjects perceive us and on the data we collect?
- 2.How does a researcherâs position evolve over time and what effects might this have on our research projects?
- 3.How do the emotional reactions we have affect the ways in which we interpret the data that we collect?
- 4.What options are open to a researcher when access to data is denied?
- 5.How might we adapt our methodologies in order to be flexible to the challenges of conducting research in hostile environments and authoritarian regimes?
Overview of Chapters
As I noted above, the content of this edited volume is based on the positionality challenges and access frustrations that each contributor faced in some way while out in the field. One such frustration that has received only scant attention in the scholarly literature to date is the complex web of emotions and challenges facing researchers who return home to conduct research. In Chapter 2 of this volume, Nungari Mwangi illuminates some of these issues with an exploration of the positionality challenges that she faced when she returned to Kenya to carry out fieldwork for her doctoral research. While we might expect a researcher who returns home to conduct research to have an easier ride in terms of identity and access, Mwangi argues that positionality for African researchers reorienting themselves toward home means a deeper critical engagement with a variety of selves. For Mwangi, her identity as female, Kenyan, and a Cambridge University student all added layers of complexity to the way she positioned herself and the ways in which her research participants positioned her also. Bringing to life encounters which saw her at times emphasizing some aspects of her Kenyan identity while downplaying others, and at other times slipping in between identities, Mwangi disrupts well-worn dichotomies that position researchers as either inside or outside of the community being researched. In sharing her approach to questions about identity and reciprocity, she provides an avenue for researchers to consider the ways in which positionality differs for scholars researching back home while adding a female African voice to debates around ideas of strangeness and belonging.
Strangeness and belonging are well-known concepts for researchers heading to the field. Feelings of strangeness in particular often accompany the beginning stages of research which can destabilize the researcher (Agar 2006; Jackson 2010; Rancatore 2010). The author of Chapter 7 in this volume, Langton Miriyoga understands destabilization well. Like Mwangi, Miriyoga returned home to conduct research, but with one significant difference. Rather than returning to his native home of Zimbabwe, Miriyoga conducted research in his adopted home of South Africa. Adding further layers of complexity to the process of data collection and interpretation, Miriyogaâs research focus was the plight of Zimbabwean migrants, like himself, living in the townships of Cape Town and Johannesburg. Far from the ease of access he anticipated in the planning stages of his research, Miriyoga describes how shared identity does not always open doors to people and knowledge when the target research population is vulnerable and rumors about spies from back home abound. In examining his strategies for gaining access to vulnerable migrants, Miriyoga conveys a valuable lesson to researchers returning home: no matter how hard we try it is difficult to close off our own bias and memories of places and people. The mere observation of this fact, however, does not prevent us from successfully conducting research back home ; as both Miriyoga and Mwangi show in this volume, it simply means that we have to problematize the idea of home which, following Mandiyanke (2009), carries a lot more baggage when we return as researchers with intimate knowledge of the field-site and its people.
The chapters from Mwangi and Miriyoga detail specific strategies that researchers can employ to come to terms with the positionality challenges of conducting research âback home .â Both chapters consider it critical that researchers think about how prior relationships, and the ways in which fellow country men and women perceive us, can affect both the ways in which we collect and interpret data. In Chapter 3 of this volume, Christine van Hooft discusses a similar issue in her exploration of the ways in which prior relationships with oneâs research subjects can both help and hinder data collection. Early research in sociology and anthropology posited the dichotomous doctrine of the insider and the outsider , with each...