Reflexivity, Positionality and Participatory Ethics: Negotiating Fieldwork Dilemmas in International Research

Authors

  • Farhana Sultana Department of Geography, King’s College London

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14288/acme.v6i3.786

Keywords:

everyday behavior, academia, ethics, fieldwork, reflexivity, positionality, power relations, participatory research, inequalities, geopolitics

Abstract

There are critical disjunctures between aspects of everyday behaviour in the field and the University’s institutional frameworks that aim to guide/enforce good ethical practice, as the conduct of fieldwork is always contextual, relational, embodied, and politicized. This paper argues that it is important to pay greater attention to issues of reflexivity, positionality and power relations in the field in order to undertake ethical and participatory research. Drawing from international fieldwork experience, the paper posits that such concerns are even more important in the context of multiple axes of difference, inequalities, and geopolitics, where the ethics and politics involved in research across boundaries and scales need to be heeded and negotiated in order to achieve more ethical research practices.

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How to Cite

Sultana, F. (2015). Reflexivity, Positionality and Participatory Ethics: Negotiating Fieldwork Dilemmas in International Research. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 6(3), 374–385. https://doi.org/10.14288/acme.v6i3.786

Issue

Section

Special Issue - Participatory Ethics (Guest Edited by Caitlin Cahill, Farhana Sultana, and Rachel Pain)