Purpose: This paper aims to explore how an academic researcher and a practitioner experience scepticism for their qualitative research. Design/methodology/approach: The study applies Olt and Teman's new conceptual phenomenological polyethnography (2019) methodology, a hybrid of phenomenology and duoethnography. Findings: For the…

Though community-based participatory research (CBPR) boasts a robust history, challenges to conducting such work ethically and equitably remain. Common difficulties, such as addressing power dynamics and navigating mutuality, are heightened when doing participatory research with young people, specifically youth participatory action research…

This article explores how researchers adapt to disruptions that cost them access to their field sites, advancing a uniquely sociological perspective on the dynamics of flexibility and adaptation in qualitative methods. Through interviews with 31 ethnographers whose access was preempted or eliminated, I find that adaptation varied systematically…

This article addresses the implications of researcher-student cooperation in the production of empirical material. For the student to replace the experienced researcher and work under the researcher's supervision, we call such work proxy-produced ethnographic work. Although there are clear advantages, the specific relations and positions arising…

Much contemporary ethnography hopes to engage with a community to justify social critique. Whether from problem selection, interpersonal rewards, or a desire for exchange, researchers often take the "side" of informants. Such an approach, linked to "public ethnography," marginalizes a once-traditional approach to fieldwork,…

Familiarity and distance is an issue that is much discussed in ethnographic fieldwork. This paper focuses on the topic of balancing familiarity and distance when the researcher is directly or indirectly part of the field, which in the study consists of an adult education context of two different teacher-training courses for upper secondary…

Researching ethically is an institutional requirement and cornerstone of good everyday practice in conducting research, adopting a mindful consideration for participants and resisting the temptation to use methodological approaches which may exploit participants or their trust in the research process or researcher. In the context of outdoor…

Prompted by discovering a paper written in 1980 which described a process of 'ethnography by proxy', I revisit this concept in the light of two research projects: a workplace study of an electronics company conducted in the early 1990s and a later home-based study of young children's encounters with toys and technology. The paper defines…

As ethnographers we are familiar with methodological debates problematising ethnography's inherited and inherent connections to ideas of authenticity commonly mobilised to legitimate modes of representation. In this paper, we engage with the post-structural philosophies of Jacques Rancière and Judith Butler, to argue that methodological tools of…

This paper will offer a reflexive account of the research approaches used in linguistically and culturally diverse education contexts by an academic researcher from the hegemonic cultural mainstream. The discussion will cover some of the potential barriers to research with linguistically, ethnically and/or culturally diverse "others" and…

This paper complicates the contested assumptions surrounding native research by exploring the burden of representation placed on native researchers because they are seen as insiders. This particular issue of representation is important for native researchers to consider, especially in instances where the research is on an understudied or…

This is an exploration of methodological debates related to ethnographic research. Reflection on conducting research on school choice in an Australian regional centre is the beginning point for a discussion of what Appadurai describes as a dialectical relationship between the neighbourhood and its capacity to exist and reshape itself in relation…

This article draws from a 23-month ethnographic study conducted in mixed-status Mexican homes to detail the particular methodological concerns that arise when conducting research within these legally complex and vulnerable families. Specifically, the analysis illustrates when and why undocumented parents in one focal family asked the ethnographer…

When embarking on ethnographic fieldwork, a researcher must carefully consider how to present oneself when entering the field. Presentations of self become particularly important when the culture under study maintains narrowly defined expectations for personal appearance and behavior. The more defined the expectations, the more important it is for…

This article contributes to the debate on decolonising methodologies in qualitative research by considering how a white researcher can try and destabilise white supremacy when explicitly conducting research with social justice aims. It draws on data from a recent ethnographic study of minority ethnic pupils' experiences in secondary schools in…