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Coming Unstuck: Thinking Otherwise about “Studying Up”
Author(s) -
Priyadharshini Esther
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
anthropology and education quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.531
H-Index - 46
eISSN - 1548-1492
pISSN - 0161-7761
DOI - 10.1525/aeq.2003.34.4.420
Subject(s) - conceptualization , sociology , epistemology , subjectivity , ethnography , power (physics) , adversarial system , educational research , process (computing) , social science , political science , computer science , law , anthropology , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , operating system
This article extends arguments that seek to account for the paucity of research on “studying up,” suggesting that to foster a more congenial climate in which such studies can he undertaken, received discourses in educational research that assume fixed/stable identities for researcher and subjects need to be rethought. I argue that poststructuralist perspectives help us “think otherwise” on matters of power and subjectivity in research. By allowing for an inquisitorial rather than an adversarial stance to studying the workings of power, such perspectives allow a different conceptualization of research that could ease the process of doing ethnographic research with the powerful and broaden the approaches currently available to studying up in educational research.