Positionality and the (In)visible Labor of Research Assistants

• In Event: Positionality and Reflexivity in Political Science II: The International Context

Abstract

Many scholars who carry out field research rely on the help of local research assistants who contribute to logistics, translation, interviewing, and data collection. While this contribution is not always made explicit, their role in the collection and interpretation of data means that research assistants have a significant influence on the research output. It is therefore not just the social locations of the researcher and the participant that influences the generation of knowledge, but the social location of the research assistant who acts as an interlocutor between the two parties. As scholars such as Fujii (2009), MacLean (2010), and Cammett (2013) have argued, the social location and characteristics of one’s research assistant can impact access to, and interactions with, research participants. This paper seeks to extend this discussion by systematically documenting the specific ways that local research assistants contribute to the production of knowledge and how positionality—both the researcher’s and the research assistant’s—influences these interventions. We do this through an autoethnographic study of a researcher’s (Jessica Soedirgo) and a local research assistant’s (Syahar Banu) experiences conducting interview-based research on religious violence in Indonesia. We show that research assistants do not merely have an impact during the data collection process, but also its interpretation. After reflecting upon and rendering the intellectual labor of research assistants visible, this article closes with some practical suggestions as to how researchers can build more ethical relationships with research assistants and participants.

Authors

• Syahar Banu, Human Rights Watch

• Jessica Soedirgo, University of Toronto