ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to discuss both a new theoretical perspective and new methodological approaches to framing and researching vulnerability within ethnographic inquiry. Doing so, we focus on the question of the relevance of vulnerability for ethnographic research processes in education. Based on the assumption of the fundamental relatedness and relationality of subjectivity, vulnerability is theorised at different stages of the research process. First, the question of the extent to which knowledge can be considered vulnerable (Said, 1994; Foucault, 2010) is posed. This brings into focus the epistemes that frame research, as it were (Butler, 2016). Second, the research process is questioned with regard to its unplannable, fragile and violating aspects. This concerns the vulnerability or fragility of planning and implementing ethnographic research. Third, the vulnerability of data and sources are considered, and related to this, the reuse of data is addressed when they are placed in different contexts and researched with different methods by different persons with alternative aims.
