ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the possibilities (and problems) arising from a multi-sited ethnographic study of LGBT-friendly diversity from a queer perspective. It does so by reflecting on three ethnographically grounded insights emerging from the fieldwork experience, drawing from these to assess the unique strengths, weaknesses, and complications arising from this methodological approach to diversity. The first pertains to queer theory’s emphasis on the performativity of gender/sexuality and is discussed in relation to the negotiation of research, gender/sexual, and political subjectivities in the field. The second relates to queer theory’s deconstructive project and explores what can be gained (as well as lost) from challenging the (ontological and physical) stability of the (LGBT-friendly organizational) field when studying diversity. The third concerns queer theory’s political project and explores the critical potential of multi-sited ethnography in the pursuit of activist goals. Ultimately, the chapter argues that, in shedding light on the various ways in which both fieldsite and research subject(s) are “laboriously constructed” , a multi-sited ethnographic approach offers scholars of diversity a useful toolkit with which to pursue critically queer questions and projects.
