methodological issues are written by women, and the other papers are writ-
ten by men. Three papers stem from doctoral dissertations; the others come
from more senior academics.
The central issue of the first four papers is how we navigate our emo-
tional, analytical, and political selves in the social worlds that we study.
How do we relate to those we observe and interview? How do we deal with
issues of power, suffering, and politics? Do we intervene when we are con-
fronted with the pain and sorrow of those we study? And how does reflect-
ing on our emotions and our relation with those we study (methods) help
us in our analytical understanding of what we encounter in the field
(theory)? Since the 1970s there is an increase in publications that show that
the rational observer is an ideal of a positivistic paradigm which does not
coincide with the daily practice of doing qualitative research. By focusing
on the daily “backstage” practice we gain a better understanding of qualita-
tive research, which helps us to get a richer understanding of the social
world we study.
In the first paper “‘You Are Not from Around Here, Are You’:
Getting Othered in Participant Observation” by Chevalier, the central
issue is the relations of herself, a Caucasian middle class researcher and
the “ethnic” men she encountered in public space. Power and dominance
form explicit features of this relation. The researcher and the men are in
constant renegotiation about who is in charge. In this paper, the author
describes her methodological and analytical experience of ethnographic
fieldwork conducted on a neighborhood shopping-square in the suburb of
a provincial Dutch town. In the multi-ethnic and male-dominated space
of this research site, she is defined as an outsider through verbal and
non-verbal interactions which have sexist connotations. By defining her as
a sexual object she is rendered as The Other. One of the qualities of the
paper resides in her minute reflections on two examples of verbal and
physical sexual harassment. Another exiting characteristic of the paper is
that her methodological reflection on how she relates to the “ethnic” men
has strong theoretical relevance. Building on auto-ethnography, she
describes how her embodied experiences and the analysis of these experi-
ences lead to theoretical insights pivotal to her research. Her personal
struggle on the square sensitizes her to understanding how power, age,
class, ethnicity, race, and law permeates social interactions in public
space.
In the second paper “Knowledge-Making and its Politics in Conflict
Regions: Doing Research in Israel/Palestine” Leuenberger discusses fear,
power, and politics in relation to doing ethnography in Israel/Palestine.
xii VOLUME EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION