Miriam Snellgrove and Samantha Punch
The purpose of this paper is to highlight the ways in which reactive researcher collaboration helps to manage some of the challenges present in insider research.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to highlight the ways in which reactive researcher collaboration helps to manage some of the challenges present in insider research.
Design/methodology/approach
Employing (auto)biographical reflections from across two different case-studies, the authors explore the ways in which reactive collaboration is enmeshed with issues associated with researching the familiar in a marketized university environment.
Findings
The authors develop the term “reactive collaboration” to explore the ways in which insider research projects have to deal with a range of challenges from within their own research community. Reactive collaboration is as much about insider research solidarity as it is with reacting to anticipated and unanticipated events during the research process (and how inside researchers do and do not deal with them). Reactive collaboration highlights the successes as well as the failures of insider researchers negotiating complex research situations.
Originality/value
The authors show how reactive collaboration occurs in challenging research environments, including the joys, sorrows and failures. The authors argue that the challenges and benefits of insider research can be helpfully crystalised through reactive collaboration.
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Adriana Angela Suarez Delucchi
The purpose of this paper is to problematise the idea of “at-home ethnography” and to expand knowledge about insider/outsider distinctions by using insights from institutional…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to problematise the idea of “at-home ethnography” and to expand knowledge about insider/outsider distinctions by using insights from institutional ethnography (IE). It also examines the strengths and challenges of “returning” researchers recognising their unique position in overcoming these binaries.
Design/methodology/approach
IE is the method the researcher used to explore community-based water management in rural Chile. The researcher is interested in learning from rural drinking water organisations to understand the way in which their knowledge is organised. The data presented derived from field notes of participant observation and the researcher’s diary.
Findings
The notion of “at-home ethnography” fell short when reflecting on the researcher’s positions and experiences in the field. This is especially true when researchers return to their countries to carry out fieldwork. The negotiation of boundaries, codes and feelings requires the researcher to appreciate the complex relationships surrounding ethnographic work, in order to explore how community-based water management is done in the local setting, without forgetting where the setting is embedded.
Originality/value
Unique insights are offered into the advantages and tensions of conducting fieldwork “at home” when the researcher has lived “abroad” for an extended time. A critique and contribution to “at-home ethnography” is offered from an IE perspective.