Positionality and Reflexivity in Political Science II: The International Context

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Both qualitative and quantitative scholars are increasingly aware of the effects of their personal identities on their research. Across the positivist-interpretivist spectrum, researchers are increasingly attentive to the constraints, opportunities and complexities that their social locations bring to all stages of the research process. This includes sex, gender, class, ethnicity, age, life experience, and physical and linguistic traits, among other components of one’s self. That being said, while there is growing recognition that researchers must confront and respond to positionality, there remains more debate and less agreement as to how one can and should recognize and respond to the effects of positionality.

With this in mind, this panel aims to foster a productive, nuanced, and expansive discussion of positionality with the goal of sharing and building strategies to integrate reflexivity into research processes. The second of a series of two related panels devoted to positionality and reflexivity in research, this panel explores and confronts positionality in international research, with scholars exploring sites ranging from Eastern Europe to Asia to Africa with varying identities as insiders and outsiders. While focusing on different aspects of positionality and reflexivity in international research, the papers on this panel are united by a focus on two themes. First, these papers outline the constraints, opportunities and complexities that the researchers’ own unique social location in their respective field sites afforded their research programs. Second, the papers outline particular strategies they have adopted to confront and respond to positionality, and how they integrate reflexivity into their specific research designs and with what effect.

Yi-Chun Chien’s paper reflects on navigating field research in her “home” country of Taiwan and the advantages and disadvantages of her perceived “local” identity. In particular, she highlights how professional status impacted her access to participants, her ability to collect data, and to build working relationships. Drawing on his field research in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Organization of American States (OAS), and the African Union (AU), Aarie Glas argues that reflexivity is necessary for research on organizational culture and the practice of diplomacy, areas of growing interest in International Relations, and outlines strategies to better incorporate the practice into research within “elite” settings. Reflecting on their working relationship as a researcher and research assistant, Jessica Soedirgo and Syahar Banu document 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. Their paper argues that research assistants do not merely have an impact during the data collection process, but also its interpretation, offering some practical suggestions for how researchers can build more ethical relationships with research assistants and participants. Eleanor Knott and Audrey Alejandro close the panel by challenging the categories of “local” and “international” themselves. Drawing from fieldwork in post-Communist Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean, the authors argue that destabilizing and reflecting on these categories can generate insights for research in comparative politics and international relations. Together, the papers on this panel will generate practical and actionable means to integrate reflexivity into all stages of the research process.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 46: Qualitative and Multi-Method Research

Cosponsor

• Related Groups / Interpretive Methodologies and Methods

Individual Presentations

• Homecoming with a New Identity: Returning “Home” for Field Research - Yi-Chun Chien, National Chengchi University

• Power, Positionality, and Positions of Power: Reflexivity in Elite Interviewing - Aarie Glas, Northern Illinois University

• Positionality and the (In)visible Labor of Research Assistants - Syahar Banu, Human Rights Watch; Jessica Soedirgo, University of Toronto

• The World at the Door: Problematizing the Local/International Dichotomy - Eleanor Knott, London School of Economics; Audrey Alejandro, London School of Economics

Chair

• Aarie Glas Northern Illinois University

Discussants

• Dvora Yanow Wageningen University

• Nicholas Rush Smith CUNY-City College