narratives of three generations of urban middle-class - eTheses ...

Insider and outsider, I argue, are, however, simplistic constructions of dichotomous
identities that overlook subtle processes of representation and power. Strathern, for
instance, is sceptical of the “insider” view which as she rightly points, need not
necessarily be the narratives of the ‘natives’, simply owing to the researcher’s field site
being his/her “home” (Strathern, 1987 cited in Reed-Danahay, 1997: 5-6). I too believe
this is the case given there cannot be one single story of either the home or the native.
In such a case there might be the researcher’s bias to privilege one among the many
stories that he or she best relates to from his or her positionality at home that is socioculturally
and inter-subjectively conditioned by generation, gender and class. Hence
whether the auto-ethnographer is the anthropologist or sociologist, studying one’s
‘home’, this figure is not completely “at home” in telling ‘the’ ‘native’ story.
For instance, it has not been a mere coincidence to experience as a woman researcher,
a pronounced gendered receptivity of this research question on intimacy. Almost all
women across all three generations seriously contemplated questions on intimacy and
relationships, narrating about these more emotionally than sexually, though not at the
exclusion of the latter as the two dimensions of intimacy seem to be intricately
intertwined for most of these women. On the contrary for many men, physical intimacy
was often disengaged from emotional intimacy. Interestingly their initial reaction to my
research on intimacy evoked vivid sexual imageries rather than anything else. Some
men humorously commented on the ‘sexiness’ of such a ‘hot’ and ‘spicy’ topic. I could
read that the humour behind such sexualization was only apparently humorous. “Did
you mind, it’s just a joke lady!” they said, to apologize. “No, I don’t mind that”, I said. I
said so, to welcome more of such unhindered data in the form of spontaneous
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