ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about an epistemological exercise of reflexive sociology. It discusses the implication of the researcher's positionality for the process of knowledge production and the need for understanding positionality as relational, unstable, not fixed and contextually situated. The work draws and comments on accounts emerging from two qualitative ethnographic research projects on the educational, housing and mobility strategies of Roma communities living in the area of Naples. The chapter also talks about Bourdieu and Passeron's concept of symbolic violence to refer to the endemic risk to impose and legitimate a cultural arbitrary through the production of meanings and codes in the relations between the researcher and the researched. It further explains the political nature of fieldwork, which can be considered as an inherently confrontational space where symbolic violence can occur as a result of the intertwining between power relations.
