Paper short abstract:

Drawing upon field experiences of 'rapport rupture' in a Buddhist nunnery in South Korea, this paper explores how ethnographic 'failure' and conflict might be fruitfully understood, and works to unpack long-standing understandings of field 'rapport', along with notions of 'successful' ethnography.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing upon my fieldwork at Keumgangsa, a Buddhist nunnery in South Korea, this paper explores how ethnographers might fruitfully understand 'rapport failure', 'rapport rupture' and emotions in the field. I focus on how I gained, and then later lost, rapport with significant sections of the community. This resulted in censure, an acute and very public loss of face, my withdrawal from Keumgangsa, and a pervasive sense of shame. I employ these field experiences to examine and unpack long-standing understandings of field 'rapport' and 'cultural intimacy', along with their association with 'successful' ethnography. I argue that rather than amounting to ethnographic 'failure', difficult ,and even emotionally tumultuous, field relations can often produce invaluable data and crucial insights. I discuss how, upon examination of my experiences and data, I discovered that I had (perhaps paradoxically) gained cultural intimacy and powerful insights through the experience of shame and 'failure', and that these emotions were a crucial tool in data collection and understanding the monastic culture of the nunnery. I argue that my 'rapport rupture', loss of face and shame were equally vital to my analysis as were my 'successful' field relationships. Indeed, I do not believe I would have gained key insights without these experiences, which enabled me to move beyond polite social relations, which at Keumgangsa, often worked to conceal nuns' private lives.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper I discuss several dead ends I encountered throughout ethnographic fieldwork with Eritrean migrants in Melbourne. I review conceptual and methodological limitations to my work that these ends reflect, and the transformations and opportunities for learning that followed.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I discuss several dead ends I encountered throughout ethnographic fieldwork for my doctoral research with Eritrean migrants in Melbourne. I review conceptual and methodological limitations to my work that these ends reflect, and the transformations and opportunities for learning that followed.

I first consider the 'end' of a fieldsite - the closure of an Eritrean café that served as a central meeting place for migrants and a key site for the research. While the café's closure initially felt like a tremendous loss - both research-wise and personally - it also provoked new conversations, questions, and promising directions for further inquiry. More than that, it triggered questions on the temporal and spatial boundaries of ethnography in my work and about opportunities for research relationships to outgrow designated research spaces.

I then discuss how linguistic challenges I faced pushed me to rethink my approach to participant observation, and to heavily rely on regular, ongoing conversations with participants in English. I think through the implications of these methodological shifts for the research and for relationships with key participants.

Finally, I reflect more broadly on foundational lessons that seemingly terminal setbacks to fieldwork may teach ethnographers, and on hopes they may hold for future work.

Paper short abstract:

The growth of social media use and research has created dilemmas for researchers that may not be addressed using currently adapted ethnographic techniques. Using the authors experience, this paper introduces a narrative approach to social media research as one potential solution.

Paper long abstract:

The exponential growth of social media use means that it is now recognised not as a separate domain but as an integral part of many people's lives. Social media research therefore provides the potential for insight into many areas of social life in a similar way to social research more generally. However, the many and varied ways that social media can be utilized may create dilemmas for researchers who are ethnographically inclined. Social media users can be anonymous, public or private and platforms may involve a few users to hundreds of thousands of users. While ethnographic techniques have been adapted to social media the practical reality of doing participant observation in a social media environment may make it extremely difficult to find a technique that works. Problems may arise relating to the difficulty of getting consent in such an environment or the primarily textual nature of the data. This paper will explore these problems and one solution through the author's own experience of conducting research into Australian racism and community resilience on Facebook and Twitter. The author will describe how a narrative approach provides an alternative to participant observation, while still affording an in depth ethnographic type of analysis. This is a novel approach that offers an additional solution to ethnographic practice on social media.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation will discuss the conflicts, primarily surrounding positionality, experienced by one foreign female anthropologist in Northern Thailand during a year-long research project studying men who purchase sex work.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation will discuss the conflicts, primarily surrounding positionality, experienced by one foreign female anthropologist in Northern Thailand during a year-long research project studying men who purchase sex work. During the course of data collection, which included hundreds of participant observations at locations where Thai heterosexual men purchase sex, my positionality as a foreign female researcher both strengthened and complicated relationships with male and female informants in many ways. This presentation will discuss conducting participant observations as an outsider visiting the world of massage parlours and karaoke bars, and it will question how to do no harm in communities where some sex workers don't want researchers telling their stories. Through discussing a series of events with one organized group of female sex workers who were hesitant to speak to researchers, I will discuss how "ethnographic dead ends" also serve as tools to understand legal, political, and cultural processes in new ways. This research also highlights that ethnography involves attempting to do no harm to a wide range of individuals who experience life differently, all of whom must be considered when planning and conducting ethnographic research.

Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses the dilemmas of anthropological fieldwork as I draw on my experiences of research with Muslim immigrant women in Auckland with whom I shared an insider position. It discusses these moments of frustration and the strategies I devised to address these challenges.

Paper long abstract:

Prior to embarking on fieldwork, over the course of a year I developed and refined my research methodology, attentive to situations where participants might feel uneasy, emotionally disturbed or otherwise uncomfortable. I went through a full human ethics review process to ensure I was alert to every potential situation arising in the field. Over the same period I made time to establish rapport with potential research participants. As a part of my pre-fieldwork preparations, I attended three annual conferences of the Islamic Women National Council (IWCNZ) along with many other events such as mosque visits, Friday prayers, and Eid festivals. I became acquainted with many Muslim women from Auckland. All of them eagerly exchanged their contact details with me and offered themselves as interviewees or directed me to other relevant women for interviews. However, when I finally started my fieldwork nothing occurred as planned. Most of the women either did not respond to my calls or answer my emails and texts or just apologised and refused to participate. A few women said that my research looked very "intrusive" and it was hard for them to free up time to be involved. Other women agreed to interview for just the one sitting. At that juncture my hopes shattered as I questioned my anthropological training, berating myself for being an inadequate researcher. I overestimated my access on the basis of shared religion which was insufficient to confer an insider position. Moreover, complying with institutional ethical procedures from A-Z created a false sense of security not borne out during the research.

Paper short abstract:

Conducting ethnographic fieldwork in a familiar space is an exercise in understanding researcher positionality. This paper reflects on the process of doing research in a familiar space and considers the broader methodological implications of anthropology 'at home'.

Paper long abstract:

Conducting ethnographic fieldwork 'at home' is often assumed to provide automatic insider status or to be a threat to objectivity. At its most extreme, home-town ethnography is undermined by the colonial foundations of anthropology that still permeate contemporary understandings of value and legitimacy in academic research.

I spent my formative years in a regional Queensland town, dissatisfied by the consequences of rurality on an active teenage life. After migrating outwards I was left with an ambivalent understanding of what home meant. I found my own ideas reflected in Madden's (1999, p. 261) working model of home as a "problematic, yet attractive domain". In 2016, I returned to the area as an anthropologist, to explore the experiences of working holidaymakers employed in seasonal agricultural labour. Pre-existing connections made for a smooth transition into the field; family and friends provided accommodation when required, and seeking out research participants began by catching up with old neighbours. Adjusting to dual roles of researcher and returning resident unveiled feelings of discomfort and a heightened, uncertain sense of self that was at odds with assumptions of familiarity and belonging associated with localness.

Conducting ethnography at home became an exercise in understanding shifting positionality. By sharing some internal conflicts and crises, this paper reflects on the process of conducting research in a familiar space and considers the broader methodological implications for doing ethnography at home.

Paper short abstract:

I query parts of the decolonisation endeavour after encountering some methodological limits during my doctoral fieldwork. I argue for a sensitivity to the realities of participants' lives and the need to strike a balance between these and the researcher's own intellectual and political goals.

Paper long abstract:

The decolonisation of anthropology aims to disrupt and reorient knowledge and power systems within the academy. In this paper, I query elements of the academic decolonising endeavour after encountering some limits to applying an indigenous research methodology during my doctoral fieldwork. The fieldwork was conducted throughout 2017 in Whakatāne, a small town in the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, where I primarily worked with non-indigenous adult students of the Māori language. In exploring the question, 'Would it be appropriate to employ an indigenous research methodology in this project?,' for nearly a year I consulted widely with participants, locals, lay activists, and academics in different disciplines at a number of institutions. My intention in wanting to engage with kaupapa Māori research methodology, which is centred on Māori values and promotes the Māori voice within the research design, was to show respect and support for te ao Māori, and in so doing, make this study a contribution to the decolonisation of anthropology in Aotearoa. However, because of the mixed responses I received and a lack of participant engagement with this part of the work, it became apparent to me that it would be more culturally sensitive to abandon this aim and instead employ another methodology. I argue that when working to decolonise the discipline, anthropologists need to be sensitive to the realities of participants' lives and mindful of striking a balance between these and the researcher's own intellectual and political goals.

Paper short abstract:

Some of international development's smokescreens of successful interventions disappear under ethnographic scrutiny. Understanding such voids can be more illuminating than studying the interventions themselves, which raises important questions about the interface of politics and development.

Paper long abstract:

This paper reflects on the methodological implications of a multi-sited ethnography undertaken in 2016-17 in India and South Africa, which endeavoured to scrutinise the process of scaling up a particular international development intervention (a secondary school program focused on Education for Sustainable Development) from one country to the other. Faced with the realisation that the object of research existed in policy documents, NGO boardrooms and websites, but did not directly manifest in on-the-ground outcomes, the research turned from an examination of an intervention into an investigation into its absence. The resulting shift in research questions prompted a re-definition of what constitutes an 'intervention' and ultimately led to a new conceptualisation of the concept of scale, and the role of postcolonial states in mediating interventions administered by non-state actors. The iterative process of posing an assumption (existence of the intervention), the assumption being rejected (the postcolonial states' interference with the possibility of the intervention being implemented) and the emergence of a new research question (what political goals was the intervention meant to serve and the ways in which this might have contradicted the state's agendas) points to the strengths of the ethnographic method in its ability to constantly re-invent itself. This paper examines the implications of this constant re-invention to the comparative study of development and education in postcolonial settings.