ABSTRACT
The purpose of a ‘methods’ chapter, in any research-based book, is to explain and justify how the study was done and how and why it was written the way it was. In this sense, this chapter is standard: I describe who was interviewed, and where, and for how long, and why I chose these particular participants, and what the settings were like. I show that the research design supports the findings and explain how my process ‘fits’ into scholarly research more widely. I explain how I wrote about the study and discuss some of the tensions therein. This is a qualitative, interpretive, ethnographic study that applies a critical lens to social relations, and although I assume the reader is familiar with such things, I explain in this chapter how this study is part of those traditions. In this chapter, I also introduce the use of autoethnographic insights, personal narratives, and reflexivity to manage and benefit from researcher experience and positionality, So far, so ordinary.
