ABSTRACT
Ethnographic methodology involves the identification and study of cultural ‘Others’. In order to study cultural ‘Others’ as an object, the ethnographer is not only making cultural diversity the platform for her studies, but she herself is participating in constructing cultural diversity and, thus, her access to the object of study implies cultural encounters. Hence, the particularities of ethnographic methodology are informed by their interculturality. This is obviously not a new observation. For some time, concepts like intersubjectivity, reflexivity and autoethnography have functioned to critically embrace the simultaneous identification and construction of difference and have thus taken into account the interactional aspects of ethnographic fieldwork (Butz & Besio 2004; Davies 1998; Hastrup 2007). Thus, in many studies, the ethnographer’s reflexivity is indicated by either an initial confession of an awareness of intersubjectivity or a statement about the unavoidable act of domination involved in the ethnographic encounter. This has led to a range of useful hands-on literature and literature on the practical and ethical dilemmas involved in accessing ‘the Other’ (e.g. Burgess 1984; Liamputtong 2010; McLean & Leibing 2007) and to highly appropriate and critical discussions of the researcher’s power to construct and represent her object (Clifford & Marcus 1986; Fabian 1983; Madison 2005). However, just as frequently, the intersubjective aspects are perceived as an obstacle that should preferably be transgressed or somehow worked around rather than an inherent—and productive—element of the research process and data collection.
