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Fieldwork, Identities, and Intersectionality: NegotiatingGender, Race, Class, Religion, Nationality, and Age in the ResearchField Abroad: Editors' Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2009

Candice D. Ortbals  and
Meg E. Rincker
Candice D. Ortbals
Affiliation:
Pepperdine University
Meg E. Rincker
Affiliation:
Purdue University Calumet
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Extract

Political scientists who have conducted research abroad experienceexcitement as well as great disappointment. Meeting and utilizingthe help of knowledgeable, responsive interviewees can beexhilarating; yet a cancelled interview, illness, and lack of fundsdampens the social scientific enterprise. In this symposium, wediscuss the nuts and bolts of field research and we explore theconstraints and opportunities that arise from the interaction ofresearchers' personal identities (gender, race, class, religion,nationality, and age) and their research context. We contend thatmost training received before fieldwork focuses little, if at all,on the personal consequences of leaving one's home for a year,trying to integrate into another culture, and facing(mis)perceptions based on one's identity. As the quotations aboveindicate, the symposium hopes to demonstrate how a researcher can begutsy in the uncharted waters of fieldwork, especially withinteractions pertaining to one's identities. Although we acknowledgethat no preparation will entirely eradicate disappointing days inthe field and misperceptions of identity, we encourage new fieldresearchers and graduate students to be aware that the process ofaccessing data abroad is an intensely personal one. The symposiumcontributors are comparativists, mainly at the career stages ofassistant professor and recently tenured professor, who haveresearched in Argentina, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Columbia,Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Ethiopia, France, India, Jamaica, Japan,Kenya, Mexico, Mozambique, Peru, Poland, Russia, Spain, Uruguay, andVenezuela.

Type
Symposium
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , April 2009 , pp. 287 - 290
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 2009

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