"Sister Akua, they say you should dance": negotiating roles in participant observation

Abstract

Relationships, and specifically the relationship between the fieldworker and the research subjects, are at the core of the process of all anthropological and ethnographic research and to a very large extent determine the outcomes of the research. In addressing the question of how far a participant observer should attempt to "become" a member of the group she is studying, we must also recognise the complexity of individual and social identities assumed or attributed to her. When the distinction between aspects of "self" and "other" is blurred, the fieldworker can be simultaneously (but not fully) "insider" and "outsider" in different facets of her identity and in different relationships. Drawing on experiences of recent ethnographic fieldwork among members of churches in a village in southern Ghana, this paper explores aspects of identity that contribute to this ambivalent status of the fieldworker. It considers the extent to which the researcher has control over her research roles and the implications of this in terms of access, acceptance, data collection, and obligations and responsibilities of the researcher to her informants.