Insiders, Outsiders, and Credible Visitors in Elite Interviewing

• In Event: Reconsidering the Field: Researchers, Subjects, and Positionality

Abstract

Literature on interviewing stresses the importance of “insider” status for the conduct of research. That there exists discrete identity categories of “insider” or “outsider” and contexts of “elite” and “non-elite,” and that these distinctions are consequential for our research, are oft-repeated themes in this literature. Herein, common wisdom suggests that we ought to become an insider in order to access participants, engage in meaningful interviews, and to understand information in the context of elite settings. At the same time, however, there is a growing consensus in qualitative political science more broadly that a researcher’s positionality impacts research in myriad and relational ways. Contextually-dependent perceptions of self, other, and the relationship between self and other shape our ability to access and interact with participants, inform the knowledge we generate within interactions, and make possible the ethical relationships we aspire towards. Here, the common wisdom is that we should aspire towards reflexivity; engaging in an active and ongoing processes of interrogation of our identities, power, and positionality, of how this is read by others, and of how this informs our research within and across interactions.

These lessons appear at odds: the importance of developing a static conception of elite insider alongside a push to continually and actively appraise and respond to our positionality across and within interactions. In this paper, we place these literatures in productive dialogue in an effort to resolve this tension and provide actionable strategies for engaging in reflexive research in elite settings. To this end, we being by explicating the logical and practical limitations of assuming static categories of “insider” and “outsider.” An actively reflexive approach to elite interview research makes clear that we never arrive at static identities and our presentation of status never translocates neatly across contexts, participations, or within singular interactions. Rather, as we show, the qualities that inform perceptions of status are variably salient within and across contexts and interactions. Moreover, as we demonstrate, seeking to adopt a static notion of insider status may delimit the reflexivity required of research, inhibit access, preclude the flow of information within research interactions, and undermine attempts to build and maintain ethical working relationships with research participants. After explicating these challenges, we then turn to offer a corrective.

As a response to these limitations, we propose that researchers aspire towards self-presentation as a credible visitor: a competent and trustworthy entrant into a community for the purposes of knowledge generation. We see self-presentation as a credible visitor as aspirational and processual, rather than a discrete goal to be realized or box to be ticked. We intend this approach as a complement to the importance of adopting an ongoing “posture of active reflexivity” (Soedirgo and Glas 2020).

To explore this notion of a competent visitor and to underscore its utility in research practice, we draw on our experiences conducting more than 175 interviews with “elites” within two different research agendas: examining regional diplomacy practices within a host of organizational settings, including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, African Union, and Organization of American States, and exploring the adoption and implementation of social protection politics in East Africa through interviews with officials from the World Bank, United Nations agencies, and the national governments of Tanzania and Kenya. Through reflection on these experiences, and those of other scholars, we demonstrate the importance of aspiring towards a self-presentation of credible visitor rather than “insider” status. We show that by aspiring towards this self-presentation researchers may be better situated to access to participants, engage in meaningful and nuanced knowledge generation within research interactions, and equipped to pursue and uphold ethical working relationships with participants.

Authors

• Aarie Glas, Northern Illinois University

• Alesha Porisky, Northern Illinois University