Negotiating Ambiguous Standpoints: Transnational Research and Conducting Reflexive Feminist Ethnography in Socio-Legal Studies

• In Event: 484 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Paper Session. The Ethnographic Problematic: Race and Ethnicity in 21st Century Ethnography

Abstract

As a Korean-Canadian sociologist from an Australian academic institution researching migrant women in South Korea, I explore the difficulties in negotiating “standpoints”, making self-disclosure in social science research, and conducting reflexive ethnography. Extended ethnography allows the researcher to win trust from research participants because researcher is situated in a social environment to build trust and strengthen social relations. This process, however, requires meticulous observation and social analysis to situate locality and positioning of the social relations between your collective identity and the group identity of the "informants" beyond the simple dichotomy of the researcher ("powerful") and the researched ("powerless"). This is an especially pressing issue at this age with shifting, plural and complex ways in which individuals can identify themselves and be identified. As a transnational researcher studying transnational phenomena with international migrants, I pay attention to contextualisation of social relations according to history and social structure, beyond prima facie personal assessment or self-identification. This paper identifies challenges of doing fieldwork in socio-legal studies with transnational migrant women in South Korea. The first part of this paper lays out research question and the process of designing research accordingly. Subsequently, I identify "standpoints" at different juncture, and bring in social relations to contextualise different standpoints and the understanding between multiple subjectivities. I question a possibility of self-disclosure, given global complexities and plurality of identities, and argue the importance of contextualising reflexivity in social relations. The last section discusses gaining access to communities and challenges in conducting reflexive ethnography.

Author

• Sohoon Lee, University of Sydney