[Commlist] CFP: Reflection on Research Experiences among “Unmarked” Groups Ethnographies of Inverted Fieldworks

Reflection on Research Experiences among “Unmarked” Groups
Ethnographies of Inverted Fieldworks

Convenors: Yolinliztli Pérez Hernández (École des Hautes Études en 
Sciences Sociales; Institut National d’Études Démographiques) & Paulina 
Sabugal Paz (University of Pisa; University of Roma Tre)
Contacts: (yolinliztli.perez /at/ ehess.fr), (pau.sabugal /at/ gmail.com).

Ethnography has been historically linked with the colonial relationship 
between Europe and their ex-colonies and with other asymmetries. For 
social anthropology, for example, fieldwork has consisted for a long 
time in the study of “exotic cultures” in non-European societies, and 
for sociology in the research of “marginal groups” in modern societies. 
Fieldwork research has an a priori: the researcher or participant 
observer belongs to a “we” group (civilized and Westerns) and the 
informant or participant observed, belongs to a “they” group (primitive 
and non-Western). This tendency is today mainly maintained. Researches 
about “unmarked” groups (white, wealthy and heterosexual people, for 
example) are scarce. Although the “unmarked” comprises the vast majority 
of social life, the “marked” commands a disproportionate share of 
attention from social scientists currently doing ethnography studies. 
Regretfully, researches subverting these historical hierarchical 
relationships are still rare. Several methodological obstacles (How to 
get access to people in order to study them? Who gives access and on 
what terms? Who can and who does study whom? And, under what conditions 
and for which objectives who studies who?) and epistemological 
consequences (since the marked already draws more attention within the 
global culture, social scientists contribute to re-mark marked groups, 
and to reproduce common-sense images of the social reality) are 
associated with this marginality.

Furthermore, not only those kind of studies are little common, but also 
personal reflections on research experiences. This panel aims at 
fulfilling this theoretical vacuum by gathering researchers working on 
“inverted” fieldworks. It invites social scientists conducting 
ethnographic fieldwork about “unmarked” groups to send a proposal. 
Theoretical and methodological reflections are welcomed as well as 
reflections on how asymmetrical relationships play in fieldwork 
relationships (reflexivity).

Proposals are welcome from different research fields such as 
anthropology, sociology, history, Latin-American studies, political 
studies and Media and communication studies working with ethnographic 
methods (visual ethnography, documentary, visual anthropology and 
sociology).

Papers are invited on topics related, but not limited, to:

- Methodological, theoretical, and practical (access to fieldwork) 
challenges that researchers face when they study “unmarked” groups;

- How fieldwork experiences contribute to thinking epistemological 
conditions of the production of knowledge;

- Significant elements for the researcher’s identity to defined 
respectability: mainstream social values, race, gender, social interests;

- How a phenomenon becomes an ethnographically studiedly and 
legitimately subject of research;

- Under what historical, social and cultural conditions a social segment 
deserve ethnographic research;

- How methods can be used not only to debunk hierarchical research 
relationships but also to produce new scientific insights with greater 
validity.
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