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http://fmx.sagepub.com Field Methods DOI: 10.1177/1525822X09349919 2010; 22; 16 srcinally published online Nov 18, 2009; Field Methods Ayça Ergun and Aykan Erdemir in a Foreign Land; "Outsider" in One’s Own LandNegotiating Insider and Outsider Identities in the Field: "Insider" http://fmx.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/22/1/16 The online version of this article can be found at: Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com can be found at: Field Methods Additional services and information for http://fmx.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts: http://fmx.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions: http://fmx.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/22/1/16 Citations at Middle East Technical Univ on March 12, 2010 http://fmx.sagepub.comDownloaded from Field Methods22(1) 16 –38© 2010 SAGE PublicationsReprints and permission: http://www. sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navDOI: 10.1177/1525822X09349919http://fm.sagepub.com Negotiating Insider and Outsider Identities in the Field: “Insider” in a Foreign Land; “Outsider” in One’s Own Land Ayça Ergun 1 and Aykan Erdemir 1 Abstract The authors present a self-reflexive and comparative account of their fieldwork experiences in Azerbaijan and Turkey to examine insider and out-sider identities of researchers in settings that are neither unfamiliar nor fully familiar. It is argued that the researcher is often suspended in a betwixt-and-between position in the transformative process. This position is not necessarily a transitional one that leads to either the inclusion or exclusion of researchers by informants. Rather, the insider-outsider relationship can be conceived as a dialectical one that is continuously informed by the differentiating perceptions that researchers and informants have of themselves and others. Keywords fieldwork, insiderness, outsiderness, researcher’s identity Introduction In ethnographic literature, the implications of fieldwork for researchers are dis-cussed with reference to the transformation of researcher identities along the continuum between insiderness and outsiderness. If one discusses researcher 1 Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey Corresponding Author: Ayça Ergun, Department of Sociology, Middle East Technical University, Ankara 06531, TurkeyEmail:
[email protected] at Middle East Technical Univ on March 12, 2010 http://fmx.sagepub.comDownloaded from Ergun and Erdemir 17 identities with reference to the existence of objective and a priori categories of insider and outsider, this would lead to a simplistic binary divide between the two statuses. As Kusow argued, the “relationship between researcher and participant cannot be determined a priori such that a researcher can be cate-gorically designated either an insider or an outsider” (2003:597). Beginning from a primordial and static conceptualization of insiderness and outsider-ness does not fully explain the complexity and ambivalence of the researcher’s transformative experiences in the field. The ethnographic field “is an arena for intersubjective interaction” (Paerregaard 2002:331), and researcher statuses emerge “from the interaction between the researcher and the partici- pants as well as the social and political situation within which the interaction occurs” (Kusow 2003:597).The consequences of being an insider and outsider in the field are dis-cussed and illustrated in many works in qualitative methodology. Merton (1972) is one of the first scholars to point out the pitfalls of a static under-standing of insider and outsider statuses. He argued that “the idiomatic expression of total Insider doctrine—one must be one in order to understand one—is deceptively simple and sociologically fallacious (just as we shall see is the case with the total Outsider doctrine)” (p. 24). Merton’s words of cau-tion were inspired by the aphorism “one need not be Caesar in order to understand Caesar,” which he borrowed from Simmel by way of Weber (1972:n. 31). Simmel’s contribution is limited to refuting the argument not only that it is necessary to be an insider to understand properly (à la verstehen ) but also that a “stranger” might have certain advantages that the insiders do not have: “The [stranger’s] distance . . . indicates that one who is close by is remote, but his strangeness indicates that one who is remote is near” (2002:30-34).Since then, various studies have been published probing insider/outsider relations in qualitative research (Bolak 1996; Naples 1996; Adams 1999; De Andrade 2000; Merriam et al. 2001; Sherif 2001; Paerregaard 2002; Kusow 2003; Allen 2004; Shahbazi 2004; DeVault 1995; Brodsky and Faryal 2006; Guevarra 2006; Mahoney 2007; Rashid 2007). Researchers are said to have insider or semi-insider status by nature of their indigenous, native, or bicul-tural status, whereas being an outsider is often equated with being a stranger or foreigner. One can hardly deny the potential advantages of being an insider, keeping in mind that there can also be disadvantages to being an insider. The insider, for example, may be perceived as being untrustworthy because of his or her knowledge of and connections to the community under study. Wolf also listed the following problems experienced by insiders because of their positionality: “concealment of information,” “crossing caste at Middle East Technical Univ on March 12, 2010 http://fmx.sagepub.comDownloaded from 18 Field Methods 22(1) lines,” “the restricting expectations of others,” and “overidentification and merging and the resultant lack of privacy” (1996:15).For the insider, shared citizenship, ethnic, linguistic, religious, gender, and cultural identities or simply affinities facilitate the researcher’s access to the field. Such common ground has the potential to increase the perceived trustworthiness of the researcher while also ensuring openness on the part of the respondents, thereby facilitating rapport. Informants tend to benefit from cultural proximity and so are willing to share information more easily. The treatment of the researcher as one of their own might, however, result in ascribing to him or her the role of representing the community (Kusow 2003). Many researchers neither consider themselves to be nor want to be advocates for the communities they investigate and limit their efforts to understanding and interpretation. Representing a community is a complicated matter, par-ticularly in cases in which competing groups within a community have quite contradictory demands concerning its ideal portrayal. Moreover, the researcher can also be expected to defend the “cultural intimacy” by not revealing inti-mate secrets that could be embarrassing to the community at large (Herzfeld 1997).The degree of a scholar’s insiderness, or the degree to which scholars manage to overcome their outsiderness, is believed to determine easy access to informants, reliability of collected data, and the success of the fieldwork. Yet it is stressed that the identities of researchers in the field are in constant negotiation with the informants. As Naples argued, insiderness and outsid-erness are “ever-shifting and permeable social locations,” “negotiated and renegotiated in particular, everyday interactions,” that are “embedded in local processes that reposition . . . socially constructed distinctions” (1996:84). Similarly, Kusow characterized insider/outsider distinction to be “frequently situational, depending on the prevailing social, political, and cultural values of a given social context” (2003:592). Parameswaran further stated that “the process of conduction fieldwork . . . calls for negotiations of power relation-ships between researchers and people they encounter in the field” (2001:69).Perceptions about the researchers also shape the web of relationships constructed in the field. Scholars address a number of factors that inform the nature of the interaction between researchers and informants. These include class (Bolak 1996; Mahoney 2007), nationality (Adams 1999), race and ethnicity (DeVault 1995; De Andrade 2000; Guevarra 2006), religious background (Sherif 2001; Erdemir 2004; Mahoney 2007), age (Adams 1999), gender (Easterday et al. 1977; Gurney 1985; Bolak 1996; Naples 1996; Horn 1997; Parameswaran 2001), marital status (Friedl 1986), and profession (Ceglowski 2000). The factors above, on their own, do play a significant role at Middle East Technical Univ on March 12, 2010 http://fmx.sagepub.comDownloaded from Ergun and Erdemir 19 in shaping the outcome of the fieldworker’s negotiation of his or her insi-derness or outsiderness. The interplay among different factors presents researchers and informants with unexpected encounters and complicates the negotiation and its outcome.The aim of this article is to investigate conceptualizations discussing the scholar’s rite of passage in the field based on a binary opposition between insiders and outsiders. The continuum between these two fixed points is also accompanied by a dichotomous formal and legal status (i.e., citizenship), which can further complicate the position of the researcher as well as the analysis. Just as there are various context-dependent in-group/out-group or insider/outsider positions among the peoples scholars study, there are various field contexts of being an insider or an outsider for the researcher as well. Not only are these field contexts conceptualized by the researchers, they are defined by the informants.This article is based on a comparative analysis of our respective field-work projects in Azerbaijan and Turkey, which we started in 1997 and continued between 1999 and 2001. Since then, we have both carried out subsequent research in our respective field sites and maintained close con-tact with our informants. Ergun, a Turkish citizen, was involved in research in Azerbaijan, a country that shares historical, ethnic, and linguistic affinities with Turkey (Ergun 2002). Erdemir, also a Turkish citizen, conducted field research in his own country (Erdemir 2004, 2005b). As a nonpracticing Sunni Muslim, he studied Turkey’s Alevi religious community, which dif-fers from the country’s Sunni majority in its various religious, social, and cultural practices (Yaman and Erdemir 2006). Here, we illustrate the transfor-mative process through our experiences of conducting fieldwork in settings that were neither unfamiliar nor fully familiar. The fact that we were already partial insiders or insiders in certain respects helps us investigate the fluid and ambivalent identities we were ascribed with, embodied, and had to per-form vis-à-vis the informants. We carry out this task through a self-reflexive presentation of our field experiences within a comparative perspective (see Roberts and Sanders 2005). A comparative juxtaposition, we argue, has the potential to highlight the different ways in which researchers and their identities are negotiated subsequent to various challenges encountered in the field. Such a comparison provides opportunities to examine the range of outcomes of the interplay of factors in different but not fully unfamiliar field settings.In this article, we address the following questions: How do researchers negotiate their insider and outsider identities with their respondents? How might an insider or partial insider identity facilitate or obstruct the rapport at Middle East Technical Univ on March 12, 2010 http://fmx.sagepub.comDownloaded from
