ABSTRACT
It would be safe to assume that most forms of social science and educational research are an intervention into the lifeworlds of other people and their communities. It would also be safe to further assume that research is a mode of cultural practice predicated on the adoption of certain roles and positions by the researcher vis-a-vis those people or phenomena which ‘fall’ within the ambit of what is to be explored. It can be argued that, traditionally, this demarcation has been built around what Giddens (1991) refers to as an expert system that not only possesses (and professes to have) a range of technical competences to undertake research, but also, more importantly, has a monopoly over the production and, to some degree, circulation and consumption of that knowledge. Issues around the subtle and not so subtle manipulation of the research process by funders or sponsors notwithstanding, this control over the political economy of knowledge sets the ‘insider-outsider’ distinction as one about a contest over the production and organisation of meaning. And, more significantly, the capacity to define what counts as legitimate and illegitimate forms of knowledge.
