Reckoning with Positionality: Skewing the Outsider Stance

• In Event: Scholar to Scholar VII
  In Paper Session: Researcher as In-Outer: How does one declare insider or outsider status in ethnographic research?

Abstract

Doing fieldwork at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles, I entered the field as the ultimate other: as a tourist. This is an especially circuitous position when one is studying sites of tourism—if I take on the role of those I am observing, am I still an outsider? This paper considers the stance of the "outside insider" and the possibilities for representing others who assume a similar position as tourists and as visitors to the cemetery.

Author

• Linda Levitt, Stephen F. Austin State University