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Part of the action, or ‘going native’? Learning to cope with the ‘politics of integration’
Author(s) -
Fuller Duncan
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
area
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.958
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1475-4762
pISSN - 0004-0894
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-4762.1999.tb00086.x
Subject(s) - reflexivity , politics , action (physics) , ambiguity , sociology , identity (music) , public relations , documentation , action research , ethnography , political science , epistemology , social science , pedagogy , law , aesthetics , linguistics , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , computer science , programming language , anthropology
Summary Despite continuing work within feminist research on issues of political commitment and critical forms of engagement, and an increasing desire within geography to effect social change through our privileged positions as academics, active collaboration with groups involved in social action continues to be fraught with ambiguity and anxiety. In this paper, I consider the potential role of the ‘researcher as activist’ through documentation of my interaction and repositioning of identities while becoming involved in credit union development in Kingston upon Hull. I hope to illustrate how the maintenance of a critical, multi‐positioned (and repositioned) identity can be seen as a beneficial, reflexive learning experience for researchers operating within ethnography, and for the research itself.