Research Beyond Borders

Multidisciplinary Reflections

Contributions by Mark Carey, Kristen Conway-Gomez, Jack Fong, Sami Hanna, Cecily Jones, Virginie Magnat, Shweta Majumdar Adur, Wiline Pangle, Mónica Ruiz-Caseres, Mustafa Sever, David Del Testa, Rebecca Sammel Edited by Lise-Hélène Smith, Anjana Narayan

Publication date:

30 December 2011

Length of book:

234 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739143551

This collection draws insights from an interdisciplinary group of scholars who specialize in diverse methods ranging from ethnography, archival research, and oral histories, to quantitative data analysis and experiments used in the social sciences and humanities to reflect on the empirical, methodological, and practical implications of conducting research beyond one’s national borders. The goal of this book is to help researchers contemplate existing orientations that dominate current research processes and consider the need for transnational multidisciplinary practices that remain aware of the inequalities which continually inform research practices. With this focus, this collection is also a resourceful initiative that seeks to share experiences as well as extract key ideas and approaches likely to overlap or resonate in different disciplines.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Onto the Frontlines
Part I: Dialogues
Chapter 1: History Lessons from an Indochinese Diary
David Del Testa
Chapter 2: Beyond the Archives: A Practical Guide for Ethical Research in Latin America
Mark Carey
Chapter 3: Studying Wild Spotted Hyenas in Kenya: Challenges and Implications
Wiline Pangle
Part II: Insecurities
Chapter 4: Methodological and Positional Considerations of Crisis Field Research: The Karen Struggle against the Military Regimes of Burma
Jack Fong
Chapter 5: Building Trust, Enhancing Research: Carrying out Fieldwork in Namibia
Mónica Ruiz-Casares
Chapter 6: Conducting Cross-Cultural Research on Turtles in Bolivia Implications for Quantitative Data Collection
Kristen Conway-Gomez
Part III: Encumbrances
Chapter 7: “You can’t bring a child in here, this is a place where people come to do serious research work!”: Negotiating Lone Motherhood And Fieldworker Identities
Cecily Jones
Chapter 8: Serendipitous Treasures: Rethinking Archival Research in the 21st Century
Rebecca Sammel
Chapter 9: Negotiating the Politics of Conducting Research On Widows in India
Shweta Majumdar
Part IV: Crossroads
Chapter 10: Performative Approaches to Interdisciplinary and Cross-Cultural Research
Virginie Magnat
Chapter 11: Counter-Movement: Reconfiguring the Location of Research with Researchers from Abroad
Sami Hanna and Mustafa Sever
Chapter 12: Back from the Field: Positionality, Methodology, and Practice
Lise-Hélène Smith and Anjana Narayan
Bibliography
Index
About the Contributors

This wide-ranging collection of essays that spans behavioral ecology to feminist ethnography is an excellent contribution to the subject of transnational research diplomacy. Authors in the volume self-reflexively present the observer and the observed together showing how an ethics of methodology could dissolve the imperial gaze on the objectified other.