ABSTRACT
The chapter opens with a discussion of what it entails to study middle-classness among university students while at the same time embodying a middle-class position as a researcher. Reflecting on a research project with university students in Iraqi Kurdistan, the text explores the tension between middle-classness as a research object and also what the author names a fieldwork performance. There is a specific focus on fieldwork performances of gendered middle-class respectability by both research participants and the researcher. The chapter analyzes the performances by the researcher as self-representations that are taking place in the field with students as well as in the written analysis, showing how these can not only enable but also set up limits for knowing. Engaging in a discussion of the concepts of ‘studying sideways’ and ‘matching’, the chapter shows how these research strategies open for certain possibilities while at the same time bearing risks of obliterating differences and power relations.
