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Hi all,
Call for papers ASA Belfast, April 2010. If you would like to join our
panel, the abstracts will have to be submitted directly to www.theasa.org
Thanks
Fiona
*ASA Queen's University , Belfast, April 13-16, 2010*
Panel Proposers- Dr. Keith Egan, NUI Maynooth [log in to unmask]
Dr. Fiona Murphy, NUI Maynooth
[log in to unmask]
*Talking with difficult subjects; ethics, knowledge, relationships*
Researchers often find themselves negotiating difficult topics or
complicated research relationships. This panel explores strategies for the
interview process to enhance interviewer/interviewee rapport in order to
engage with, address and overcome potentially thorny research relationships.
How should researchers use interviews when 'deep hanging-out' becomes
politically, emotionally, and intellectually imperilled. How can the
interview process provide a context for redressing research relationships?
Such difficult moments in the field, reflected on and negotiated in the act
of writing, are considerations for this panel. In addition, many words used
to describe fieldsite relationships are fraught with darker edges
(informants, hosts etc.). The space that anthropological methodology and
academic writing allow permits a re-evaluation/confrontation with these
'negative' encounters. While the interview process has been understood as a
legitimate means of data collection, this panel asks where the limits of
objectivity lie when interviewers and interviewees become challenged by the
lack of rapport; what difficulties result in gaining access to
personal/emotionally laden information via formal interviews? The interview,
a historically constituted and culturally circumscribed form of potentially
constrained interaction between parties, often presents such a formal
setting, one less conducive to establishing the valuable rapport long deemed
so valuable. When faced with difficult subjects then, how, the panel asks,
are interviewers to engage ethically/emotionally with subjects to bridge
this gap? This panel seeks to explore the interview process through
ethnographic examples showing researchers confronting/coping with
disparities in education, outlook and interviewer/interviewee rapport. In
sum, this panel invites papers to explore strategies for addressing
'difficult subjects' (topics, people, encounters). The panel also examines
ways in which face-to-face interactions between researchers and the people
they research may negotiate the politics and ethics of interviews as
creative and productive encounters for both parties.
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