In, Out, and Amongst: Trying to connect with tweens

• 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

Before we ever get to the field, we are drawn there by the connections we feel to its inhabitants. However, how are our identities and daily interactions affected when the participants can’t fathom that connection? Although I felt I entered the field as compatriot, having grown up dealing with poverty and consumer culture, it was hard to convince poor, minority, urban tweens that this grown, middle class, white woman could relate to them.

Author

• Liz Edgecomb, University of South Florida