‘You Are Not from Around Here, Are You’: Getting Othered in Participant Observation ^☆

Paper presented at the 2012 Annual Conference of The European Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction.

Abstract

The present paper narrates the methodological and analytical experience of ethnographic fieldwork conducted on a neighbourhood shopping-square in the suburb of a provincial Dutch town. In the multi-ethnic and male-dominated space of this research site, I am firmly rendered as The Other. I reflect on how a group of male adolescents that reside on the square hone in on my quality as a female and I discuss two of my experiences with verbal and physical sexual harassment. Building on the discourse on auto-ethnography, I describe how embodied experiences and the analysis of these experiences eventually lead to theoretical insights pivotal to my research. My personal struggle on the square sensitizes me to understanding how law, both in creation and enforcement, permeates social interactions in public space.

Citation

Chevalier, D. (2015), "‘You Are Not from Around Here, Are You’: Getting Othered in Participant Observation ^☆

Paper presented at the 2012 Annual Conference of The European Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction.

", Contributions from European Symbolic Interactionists: Reflections on Methods (Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 44), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-239620150000044002