Programme full

Thursday 16 April 2015 15:30 - 17:00
PAPER SESSION 6 / PECHA KUCHA SESSIONS
A Researcher's Return to Her Family and Home as a Field Site
Demirkol, E.
(University of Sussex)
Based on my research among women whose husbands have migrated to Japan from Turkey, this paper will discuss
the methodological issues of conducting an ethnographic fieldwork in researcher's own home town in Turkey. I will
specifically focus on how changing family relations at the researcher's own 'home' influences her fieldwork experience.
Studying family as an institution is a challenging experience for the researcher in Turkey because it is regarded as a
sensitive and private structure for individuals; for example, in terms of the emotional or financial relations between wife
and husband, or the hierarchy between wife/husband/children. Although family in Turkey faces changes in itself, I
argue that specifically in small towns of Turkey, the institution of family is stuck between the past and the present. In
addition, conducting ethnographic fieldwork in the private sphere of family relations leads to a reconstruction of the
relations between the researcher and participants. While being a woman from that town makes me an insider, as a
single female university student I was in an outsider position. I argue that carrying out an ethnographic fieldwork in a
small town of Turkey, where patriarchal rules in family relations are still dominant, complicates the position of the
researcher, especially when the researcher is from the same town. Therefore, this paper will focus on the challenges
of ethnography at home and the way sensitive family issues affect the positioning of the researcher.
Participant Observation of Islamic Rituals: Negotiating ‘Worship and Business’
Uzar Özdemir, F.
(Bülent Ecevit University and Middle East Technical University)
This paper examines how insider/outsider roles are negotiated by the participant observer in religious settings in
Ankara, Turkey. Under the rapid socio-cultural transformation of Turkey with the government of the Justice and
Development Party, religion is significantly affected as a social institution by the conservative policies. Within this
framework, conducting ethnography of women’s public religious practices as a woman researcher has its advantages
and disadvantages. In order to study the religious rituals of Sunni Muslim women in different regions of Ankara, I
carried out participant observation for two years (2011-2013). As a participating observer, I prayed with the pious
women at mosques. When I informed women about my research, their first reaction was a Turkish saying: “you are
engaging in both worship and business”. Although business in sacred space is not welcome in Turkish Islam, the
women did not condemn me of a profane act in the sacred space. This signals that the pious women accepted me as
a researcher because I am an insider, since I “practice” Islam with them. I am also an outsider since I do not identify
myself primarily and solely as a pious Muslim. This positive attitude towards research in an Islamic setting is a
reflection of the comfort pious groups feel for being more visible in public spaces under the political power of an
Islamist party. This power relationship influences every step of the research, from gaining entry and trust, to
negotiating the relations between the researcher and the researched.
Social Networks, Social Anthropology and the LSE: Exploring Possibilities for Gathering Network Data
Ethnographically
Jones, A.
(London School of Economics and Political Science)
There is a growing interest in the use of social network analysis in mixed-methods studies (Crossley 2010; Edwards
2010) and in particular in the combined use of qualitative methods and social network analysis (esp. Bellotti 2014).
Likewise a growing number of researchers are using qualitative data collection techniques to generate data amenable
to social network analysis (e.g. Crossley and Ibrahim 2012; Fletcher and Bonnell 2013; Small 2009; Wells 2011). This
emerging sub-field resonates with the work of a comparatively under-explored (when compared to the Manchester
School) group of social anthropologists working at the LSE in the mid-twentieth century. In this paper I seek to revisit
the scholarship of the three most prominent members of this group – Elizabeth Bott, John Barnes and Siegfried Nadel
– to consider the implications of their work for how we might incorporate network analysis into qualitative, in particular
ethnographic, research designs. Notably, it has been argued that the impact of the LSE school of social anthropology
died out after the 1960s because of its members reluctance to couch their work in an over-arching theoretical
framework; to 'expand social networks beyond that of an 'analytical concept' applicable to rural and urban settings'
(Prell 2012: 35; also Scott 2000). As qualitative, even qualitative, methods are increasingly incorporated into studies
evaluating the impact of social interventions in defined settings of this kind, this paper seeks to explore the possibilities
for networked measures of social impact via recourse to the work of these three mid-twentieth century scholars.
BSA Annual Conference 2015 208
Glasgow Caledonian University