Conducting community-engaged qualitative research in South Africa: memoirs of intersectional identities abroad

Abstract

The influence of intersectional identities on social experiences is most often explored within research on minority populations (e.g. LGBT, African American women, etc.). However few, if any, studies have extended the subject of intersectionality to address the intersectional identities of researchers or their influence on the conduct of qualitative research in international settings. Through reflexive memoirs offered from student researchers that engaged in an international collaborative research project, this article highlights the challenges intersectional identities posed while conducting community-engaged qualitative research in Durban, South Africa. Within each memoir, particular attention is paid to (a) how the intersection of the student researchers’ perceived and actual racial, gendered, class, and national identities determined or obfuscated their statuses as ‘outsiders’ or ‘insiders’, (b) the influential nature of these mutually constitutive identities on the interview process, and (c) how the student researchers successfully or unsuccessfully negotiated the collective impact of their intersecting positions and identities in the field. By critically examining the complex and interdependent influence of race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, and class on researchers’ collection and interpretation of qualitative data, this article extends the application and relevance of the intersectionality framework to an international context and to the experiences of the interviewer/researcher.

Keywords

insider–outsider intersectionality positionality qualitative South Africa

An increasing amount of community-engaged qualitative research is being conducted in international settings. However, as various studies demonstrate, several challenges can present when negotiating differential cultural norms, languages, and spatial environments (Hult, 2014; Mill and Ogilvie, 2003; Young, 2011). Incongruences between the culture within which research is conducted and the cultural origins of the researcher can significantly shape information-seeking processes. Such incongruences can lead to misrecognition of power differentials (Mullings, 1999), misinterpretations of data (Turgo, 2012), misguided assumptions about participant behavior (Turgo, 2013), and/or unfamiliarity with the research setting – all of which compromise the conduct of quality research (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011).

Many of the problems associated with conducting qualitative research within contrasting cultural environments stem from issues surrounding positionality, that is, one’s static or shifting identities (Cassell, 2005). As some research environments are more welcoming of certain identities than others, the multiple identities researchers assume can significantly affect the conduct of qualitative interviews – impinging on not only what is communicated, but how it is communicated and how it is interpreted as well (Corbin Dwyer and Buckle, 2009; Denzin and Lincoln, 2011). The social identities of researchers can span across various domains, including sexuality, nationality, religiosity, gender, etc. And while they each carry unique implications, they rarely, if ever, operate in isolation nor are they experienced singularly. Identities intersect, which in turn engender unique social experiences. The purpose of this article is to highlight the import of intersectional identities to researchers conducting qualitative research abroad.

Intersectionality framework

Understanding social identities as multifaceted and interdependent rather than unidimensional and mutually exclusive is the central tenet of intersectionality. Emerging from Black feminist literature (Crenshaw, 1989), the concept of intersectionality was originally developed to acknowledge and analyze the unique experiences of African American women, which are often contoured by multiple systems of oppression and discrimination (i.e. racism and sexism). Because previous theoretical approaches treated race and sex/gender as distinct subjects, which centered discussions of race on Black men and issues of gender on the plight of White women, the experiences of Black women – colored by both systems of patriarchy and white supremacy – were left marginalized and ignored (Hill-Collins, 1990). Intersectionality remedies this problem by locating persons at the points of their intersecting identities and treating their simultaneous experiences of oppression as unique and deserving of specialized consideration.

Research on intersectionality has historically benefited from the in-depth nature of qualitative inquiries (Bowleg, 2008; Wilkinson, 2003). However, only a select few studies have focused explicitly on the intersectional identities of researchers or the impact of their intersectional identities on the conduct of cross-cultural qualitative research in international settings (Fournillier, 2009; Turgo, 2012). Although more recent inquires have expanded the scope of intersectionality to capture not only the experiences of the oppressed, but in general, the multiple identities of all persons – be they privileged or discriminated (Christensen and Jensen, 2012,Yuval-Davis, 2011), most studies of the intersectional identities of researchers have relied on the binary ‘insider–outsider’ framework (Kanuha, 2000). That is, whether or not the researcher originates from the culture or environment under study. While the ‘insider–outsider’ perspective has received significant traction in the past (Corbin Dwyer and Buckle, 2009; Kanuha, 2000, Obasi, 2014), as with most binary approaches, the framework is limited by its duality in that it fails to address the ‘in-between’, which is often constructed by complex experiences produced by multiple, intersecting identities.

Through reflexive memoirs offered from student researchers who engaged in an international collaborative research project, this article seeks to highlight the challenges that intersectional identities posed while conducting community-engaged qualitative research in Durban, South Africa, as well as the value of examining researchers’ identities through an intersectionality framework, rather than an ‘insider–outsider’ dichotomized lens. By addressing the collective impact of the student researchers’ intersectional identities on their cross-cultural experiences conducting community-engaged research in Durban, South Africa, this article extends the application and relevance of the intersectionality framework to an international context and the experiences of the researcher/interviewer. Moreover, in presenting the perspectives of student researchers, this paper broadens a body of literature that has largely reflected the voices of established academicians. As the application and value of qualitative methodologies continue to gain momentum in fields that were previously dominated by a quantitative dogma (i.e. psychology), and as more student researchers are increasingly traveling abroad to conduct community-engaged qualitative research, we believe the experiences shared by these student researchers can be utilized to strengthen cultural competencies, understanding of intersectional identities and their influence, and the quality of research produced.

We first begin with an overview of the context of the research study project, including its purpose, participants involved, and the objective of the student researchers. This is followed by the student memoirs. We conclude with a discussion of the challenges faced, their connection to preexisting intersectionality literature, and recommendations for future international community-engaged research.

Conducting qualitative research in Durban: building global bridges

The student researchers who contributed to this article took part in a one-month international research program entitled ‘Building Global Bridges (BGB)’. The goal of this program was to pair graduate level students from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond, Virginia with students from the University of Kwazulu-Natal (UKZN) in Durban, South Africa to conduct community-engaged qualitative research in Kenneth Gardens. Kenneth Gardens is a low-income, government-subsidized neighborhood situated in the lower middle class suburb of Umbilo. Although it was originally established in 1948 to serve exclusively poor White South Africans, over the last 25 years Kenneth Gardens has changed dramatically, in that it is now one of the most diverse spaces in South Africa (Erwin et al., 2014). Nestled in the heart of Kenneth Gardens is a community established holistic health clinic (Erwin et al., 2014). Through semi-structured interviews, the BGB student researchers conducted a needs assessment that sought to understand: 1) the extent to which the clinic was being used, and 2) if the clinic was meeting the health service needs of the community.

Over 30 interviews were conducted with residents across multiple ethnicities (e.g. Black South African, Indian-South African, Colored-South African, and White South African). Five Black UKZN students (3 males and 2 females) and 4 VCU students (2 African American females and 2 White American females) paired together to comprise teams of an interviewer and note taker. Although the students alternated between roles (interviewer and note taker), if an interviewee preferred to speak in isiZulu (the native language of the Zulu people and many Black South Africans in Durban), a fluent isiZulu student from UKZN fulfilled the role of interviewer. In some instances, when there was an uneven number of UKZN and VCU students, same school dyads were created.

The memoirs in this paper offer the perspectives of two students who engaged in this process: an African American female and a Black South African male. Their contrasting identities and roles present a counterbalance that aptly illustrates the complexity of their intersecting gendered, class, national, and racial identities. During the BGB program, students were encouraged to engage in reflexive thought as to how their positions and identities as ‘insiders’, ‘outsiders’, or ‘in-between’ influenced their experiences. The memoirs presented are expansions of these reflections and convey the difficulties a researcher may experience when their intersectional identities clash with the social norms or cultural expectations of the research environment and/or impede real-world practice of their qualitative training (e.g. objectivity).

While each memoir may contain limited theoretical insight, similar to other studies (Corbin Dwyer and Buckle, 2009; Sherif, 2001; Stich et al., 2012) their purpose is to highlight the interactive influence of intersecting identities on the conduct of qualitative research, specifically within an international setting, and moreover, spark discourse on the influence of the intersectional identities of researchers, which has been insufficiently explored in intersectionality literature. Within each memoir, particular attention will be paid to (a) how the intersection of the student researchers’ perceived and actual racial, gendered, class, and national identities determined or obfuscated their statuses as ‘outsiders’ or ‘insiders’, (b) the influential nature of these mutually constitutive identities on the interview process, and (c) how the student researchers successfully or unsuccessfully negotiated the collective impact of these intersecting positions and identities in the field. The first memoir presented details the experiences of a VCU African American female student while the second details the experiences of a UKZN Black South African male student. To protect participants’ identities, names have been replaced with pseudonyms. The discussion to follow critically explores how race, nationality, class, and gender intersect to produce differential research experiences and the importance of considering the influence of these intersectional identities in the field.

Memoirs

Memoir I: being an African American female in South Africa

It is nearly impossible to escape discussions of race in America. For many people of color, race is arguably the most employed and defining marker of one’s identity – constantly conflated (often times inaccurately) with culture, language, and behavior. Personally, my experiences with race have been rather unique, in that I not only identify as Black/African American, but I have also been known to identify as simply ‘African’.

Paradoxically, doing so in America has proven to be both confusing and infuriating. ‘You can’t be African. You’ve never even been there. If so, where in Africa are you from?’ Despite not having an answer for the latter question, I find no need to discover one. I am unequivocally sure of my African ancestry. It sits at the crux of my identity, reflective in my locked hair, preferred choice of African music, and African centered research. It is the most salient aspect of who I am.

So it is with this centralized racial identity that I arrived in South Africa: eager to conduct qualitative research and to be among ‘my people’. And yet, what I quickly learned, and had not previously anticipated, was that amongst South Africans, the influence of my identity as an ‘African’ could hardly compare to that of my predominant perceived identity as an ‘American’. As a Global Bridges student researcher, I became aware of this ‘American power’ in ways that I had never before. African Americans are typically not the face of America, and yet, there I was: an American woman, of African ancestry, in Africa, conducting research. The convergence of these identities positioned me as both an ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ researcher; and the fluidity with which I negotiated and moved between the two significantly colored my research experiences. It affected how I obtained data, the quantity, and quality.

Walking the line: insider–outsider

Though my nationality as an U.S. American rendered me an ‘outsider’ in the researcher role, my phenotypic approximation to Black South Africans (i.e. my dark skin and tightly coiled hair) allowed me to operate, especially in less research type interactions, as an ‘insider’. In most situations, at least initially, I was perceived as a native South African, so much so that I would often be spoken to in isiZulu. My physical markers of ‘inside’ membership camouflaged my national identity. Revealing that I did not speak isiZulu was of little help, as the disclosure was typically met with laughter and the continuation of the conversation in the language it began. At that point, it was only my unresponsiveness that proved convincing. The dubiousness that surrounded my ethnic origins proved to not only influence my non-research experiences, but it also framed how the Kenneth Garden participants perceived my inhabited position as a researcher and responded to the interview process.

Participant recruitment

To recruit participants for the health clinic interviews, the team relied on a local gatekeeper, Umama – an elderly woman who was heavily involved in Kenneth Gardens community activities, spoke isiZulu, and had working relationships with clinic users. Prior to our arrival in Kenneth Gardens, Umama was able to secure confirmation from several persons interested in participating in the study. However, they were unaware of who we were and what we looked like. This became most clear when my VCU colleague (also an African American woman) and I approached the participants’ homes.

As Umama would introduce the purpose of the study, I would immediately feel the participants’ eyes size me up and down. There was palpable tension. And while the tension could have very well been attributed to the presence of strangers, from my perspective, it was as if they could detect we were different, but could not place their fingers on exactly how. Then all would be revealed. ‘They are both from America.’ Seamlessly, what was once trepidation was replaced by a warm and welcoming demeanor ‘Wow, America?’ Paradoxically, it was my ‘outside’ identity as an American (not my shared physiognomy) that appeared to facilitate greater participation. A number of factors likely contributed to their willingness to invite us into their homes. Perhaps being an American was different, even intriguing. However, from their positive reactions to our American identities, it seemed as if our nationality was the primary attraction.

The draw of America

The influence of my positionality as an American was brought most sharply into focus by my interview with Sam, an elderly Black man who longed to be freed from the debilitated state with which a stroke had left him. Straining to breathe and steadying his weary balance with a cane, Sam answered the door both drained and irritated. ‘Yes’. Umama reminds him of the study and points to my colleague and me. ‘These students are here from America to talk to you about the clinic’. ‘From America? Wow … Come in, come in’.

From the moment we sat down, Sam made his desire to visit America very clear. Pausing periodically throughout the interview, he would point to the television (which was airing an American program), and seek confirmation as to whether America is as it is presented. He would consistently depart from answering questions about the clinic and instead articulate a want to drive along the California coast and take on an American wife. Such tacit advances did not go unnoticed, and in fact, made the environment a bit uncomfortable. But for the sake of continuing the interview and collecting the data, I maintained my composure and offered buffering responses.

The continuous need to refocus the interview and thwart tangential conversations was difficult, and exhausted both time and energy. However, Sam spoke to us for over an hour and a half and offered some great insight into how the clinic could be improved. Without his openness, such rich data may not have been collected. And from our interactions, it appeared that my American identity, gender, and ability to redirect the discussion contributed to his transparency and the robustness of the information offered.

Chivalry or not?

My Americanized socialization and conception of gendered relations also influenced my perception of interviewees and their behavior. This was especially the case when a husband unexpectedly sat in on an interview with his wife. With little knowledge of the family dynamics, and informed by my own notions of male chivalry and protection, I interpreted the decision to monitor the interview as a need to defend. From my southern upbringing, I have developed an understanding that male chivalry instructs men to secure that which they love. Guided by this assumption, I believed the husband’s actions were meant to ensure the ‘foreigners’ did his wife no harm. I respected it. And when he decided to read and sign the consent form on her behalf, the same rationale was applied. Based on my own perceptions, I read nothing more into the comment that he was the breadwinner or the primacy of its introduction. I barely took note of when he would interject or the manner with which he did.

In debriefing with my fellow researchers the following day, I described this event, and to my surprise, rather than agreeing with my original assessment, my colleagues, or more specifically, my BGB UKZN team leaders, met me with an alternative interpretation. Having had extensive interactions with that family, the UKZN team did not view the husband’s behavior as protective, but as controlling. The desire to sit in, the signing of the consent form, the interjections, the monitoring, all of it, in their eyes, was a function of his need to dominate. In hindsight, I could not believe I had missed it. Had I facilitated his need to control by allowing him to sign on her behalf? Could I have given her power by asking that she, alone, read and sign the form? Or was there nothing that I could have done? I blamed myself, and felt silly for being oblivious to the ‘obvious’.

My race and the perceived power of America

In retrospect, I should not have been surprised that the influence of my intersecting identities, especially my American identity, weighed so heavily on my experiences conducting qualitative research in Durban. Around the world, the U.S. American identity elicits strong reactions, both positive and negative. Perhaps it is due to Hollywood – which broadcasts exaggerated images of Americans to the world – or the foreign actions of the U.S. government, but for whatever reason notions of ‘privilege’, ‘ignorance’, ‘superiority’, and ‘novelty’ seem to loom over the heads of traveling Americans, affecting their perception and reception. In South Africa, I was not immune to this influence.

Despite sharing physical characteristics with Black South Africans, I was still viewed as American, and more specifically, filtered a majority of my experiences through an Americanized lens. For example, I drew upon my own southern Americanized notions of chivalry and ‘appropriate’ husband–wife interactions when I allowed the husband, who was not originally scheduled to participate in the study, to engage in the interview process. By accommodating his need to participate, I altered the information-seeking process. That is, I may have stifled his wife’s autonomy or the openness with which she approached the posed questions. However, my intersecting identity as a Black American woman may have also contributed to some of the rich data I collected from Sam. In closing, my gender, the ‘appeal’ of my national identity, and racial identification unforeseeably but undeniably shaped my research experiences in Durban. I never would have suspected that the influence of the American identity could be exerted through me: a woman of proud African ancestry.

Memoir II: being a Black South African male

Growing up in South Africa, a country whose history is deeply steeped in issues of race, it is near impossible to begin to consider one’s identity separate from the seemingly all-encompassing idea of race. Even today, 20 years after the first democratic elections, which also marked the end of a system of racial discrimination, race still plays an integral part in the everyday dealings of the average South African. At every turn one is reminded of one’s race, whether it be filling out forms and documents (which are always careful to state that the questions pertaining to race are merely for statistical purposes) or simple everyday interactions.

Using race as a cornerstone of identity definition in South Africa inherently ties an individual to the historical connotations of their race. This is true even when increasingly the individual has very little or no direct experience of the historical context in question. Being a Black South African and male, the narrative of my history and intersectional identity can include decades of suffering under an oppressive regime whose discrimination against my race permeated every facet of life. However, the reality of my personal history and thus my positionality is different from this long-held account of the Black South African, poor and uneducated as a result of the legacy of the Apartheid regime.

Being born in 1990, a time that was ushering in the end of Apartheid, I did not, and I will most likely never, experience Apartheid like my forbearers did. I was four years old when South Africa held its first democratic elections, still too young to understand the significance of the occasion or its impact on my life. I belong to the post-Apartheid South Africa, my earliest memories including my first day at school alongside children of different races.

The Black identity, long defined and held together by a shared experience of suffering under the Apartheid regime, has increasingly become fragmented, meaning different things to different people. Where the struggle for political freedom was a collective struggle, bringing together all those categorized as Black (including people of Indian and mixed race descent) under one banner, the struggle for economic freedom in the post-apartheid South Africa has resulted in a much more fragmented Black population and identity. It is in this context that I identify as a Black man, acknowledging the troubled history of my race but by no means defined by it. With this in mind, entering Kenneth Gardens, I knew that being Black by no means put me in a position where I could claim the experiences of our respondents as my own; I did however expect that it would somehow leave me better equipped to understand them.

‘Can I speak to someone else?’

In the field, I found that my positionality and intersecting identity as a Black man elicited different reactions and interviewing experiences with different participants. During an interview with a middle-aged Black woman about the health care issues prevalent in the community, I realized that her answers were very short and lacked detail. I tried to coax more detailed responses from her, asking follow-up questions to no avail. At the end of the interview I asked her if there was anything else that she wanted to say or whether she could elaborate on any of the answers she provided. She replied that she probably could have talked more about some of the health issues affecting women in Kenneth Gardens, but not to me because she didn’t feel it was proper to mention things to a male, especially one younger than her.

Unexpected directions

I was paired with a White female American student and we were able to successfully navigate the various challenges we encountered in the field. Being a foreigner, one could have been forgiven for assuming that my research partner would automatically find herself as an ‘outsider’, as I did at first. In reality, her position as a female often meant that our female respondents were more comfortable discussing the health challenges faced by women in the community with her. In this aspect she was obviously an ‘insider’, able to relate with our respondents. At times I observed that even her role as a foreigner proved to be an asset, with respondents seemingly eager to learn about her and in turn sharing more about themselves in the process.

Before commencing interviews, my research partner and I agreed that we would alternate, each getting a turn to conduct the interview while the other took notes. This proved to be difficult because my research partner only spoke English and we often found that the respondents either could not speak English or preferred to be interviewed in an indigenous language. In cases where the respondent expressed being comfortable with conducting the interview in English, my partner would conduct the interview while I took notes.

I noticed however that even when my partner was conducting the interview, some respondents would end up addressing their replies to me instead. During one such interview, I tried to steer the interview back to my partner but the respondent told me that she felt that I would better understand what she was saying. While she was comfortable with conducting the interview in English, she said there would be times where she would absent-mindedly default back to isiZulu. In this regard my knowledge of isiZulu and familiarity with other indigenous languages put me in the position of an ‘insider’, able to communicate more effectively with our respondents than my partner could.

Am I really an ‘insider’?

Over time, my perception of my status changed from an ‘insider’ to an ‘outsider’, as I began to realize how unfamiliar I was with the experiences of the Kenneth Gardens Community. Far from being naïve to the problems that people in a community like Kenneth Gardens might face, going in, I thought I knew what to expect. I learned however that my peripheral knowledge of the prevalent issues in the Kenneth Gardens Community could not prepare me for the reality of experiencing them, whether through observation or interviews conducted with key informants.

This came to light during a conversation I had with a high school student from Kenneth Gardens about his prospects post-graduation. The high school student was adamant that his only option was to seek employment. Coming from a background where it was taken for granted that I would study and attain a university degree, it surprised me that he was not even considering studying further. I knew that many families simply cannot afford the cost of tertiary education, but I also knew that there were many other opportunities to fund his studies. I proceeded to tell him about all the scholarships and bursaries he could apply for, even offering to help him find ones that he could apply for.

After a while of listening and nodding his head silently, to my frustration, he still asserted that a university education was out of his reach. Not satisfied, I continued to try to convince him otherwise. He finally explained to me that studying further was not a feasible option for him because his family needed, and expected, him to be another source of income as soon as possible. This presented a new dimension to a problem I thought I knew, understood, and had the solution for. It was then that I realized that I was ill-equipped to relate to or empathize with the very personal reality of experiencing the issue first hand.

Reflections

Prior to the Global Bridges experience, given the question of whether I was an ‘insider’ or not, I would have confidently stated that I considered myself an ‘insider’ without so much as a second thought. This rationale was driven by the assumption that as a Black South African, I was better equipped to understand the experiences of our respondents. My logic, however, quickly proved to be flawed. I learned that in the field, the only point of familiarity that I could cling to as a self-proclaimed ‘insider’ was the fact that I could speak isiZulu, the native language of many of our respondents. Apart from being able to converse with them in their native language, I discovered that I could not properly relate to the experiences of our participants, the issues and the problems that they faced on a day-to-day basis. Their issues were unlike mine, and in many instances their concerns reflected things that were taken for granted in my life.

Discussion

Prior examinations of researchers and their assumed identities have been principally analyzed from within insider–outsider frameworks. However, as this article highlighted, via the presentation of personal memoirs from two student researchers who simultaneously occupied distinct racial, gendered, national, and class identities while conducting qualitative research in South Africa, an intersectionality approach may be better equipped to capture the ‘in-between’ and nuanced experiences of researchers that are produced by intersectional identities. In revealing the student researchers’ unique researching experiences, the presented memoirs illuminate the epistemological and methodological issues that arise when one’s embodied roles and identities intertwine to create unique social identities that frame and shape the collection of qualitative data. In the discussion to follow, we will unpack these experiences further and relate them to preexisting qualitative and intersectionality research.

Challenge: intersectional identities can be distracting to data collection

As described by the African American student researcher, the data collection process was noticeably influenced by her ‘distracting’ identity as an American. Although she worked to gain knowledge of Sam’s experiences with the clinic, he frequently diverted her questions to impart comments about his desire to visit America and find an American wife. At first glance, one could argue that our student researcher’s ‘outsider’ status best explains her research experience. However, as the eagerness with which Sam approached the interview was likely the reason for the rich data collected, it appears that the aggregated impact of her intersecting national and gender identities was most responsible for her unique research experience; thus providing evidence that an intersectionality approach may be more suited for examining the influence of researchers’ identities and their experiences with the information-seeking process.

The bidirectional and transactional interactions and exchanges of information that occur within the context of qualitative research underscore the importance of considering not just ‘who’ is being interviewed, but ‘who’ is conducting the interview. Intersectional identities construct unique spaces from within which researchers operate, pose questions, interpret their surroundings, and perceive and respond to participants (Bowleg, 2008; Trahan, 2011). As such, understanding these unique spaces and how they influence the behavior and cognition of researchers at all stages of the research process is important to unearthing and redressing the potential methodological challenges intersecting identities can pose to the conduct of qualitative interviews. While other studies of researcher identities also note the significance of positionality to fieldwork and data interpretation (Asselin, 2003; Obasi, 2014; Turgo, 2012), their use of the restricting ‘insider–outsider’ framework oversimplifies the truly complex nature of interdependent identities that can be categorized as both ‘outsider’ and ‘insider’. Drawing from the analyses of Trahan (2011), Bauer (2014), and our own memoirs, intersectionality appears to allow for a more comprehensive understanding of the social identities of researchers that are formulated by interactive identities—which can either be oppositional (e.g. White and poor) or categorically congruent (e.g. oppressed identities – Latino and homosexual).

Despite attempts to do so, researchers’ racial, ethnic, generational, gender, and other identities cannot be removed from research contexts, viewed as mutually exclusive, nor classified as simply ‘outsider’ or ‘insider’. Instead, they are inextricably linked, collectively perceived, and moreover, create the lenses used to shape research questions, select methodologies, and formulate interpretations. In other words, they far too often fall under the category of ‘in-between’. And while conceptualizing and considering the identities of researchers as either ‘insider–outsider’ may assist in understanding factors that influence the research process, this binary approach insufficiently captures how simultaneously operating identities can either facilitate or, in the case of our African American researcher, detract from the data collection process. Additionally, ‘insider–outsider’ frameworks do not take into account what happens when one’s ‘insider’ identity intersects with an ‘outsider’ identity, or when one’s intersectional identity is ignored or inaccurately perceived.

Challenge: being perceived differently than anticipated

Before engaging in their data-gathering experiences, each student researcher was encouraged to consider their positionality as ‘insiders’, ‘outsiders’, or individuals occupying ‘the space in-between’. With the assumption that identifying as more of an ‘insider’ can provide the benefits of being aware of cultural intricacies and unspoken information, and that identifying as an ‘outsider’ may limit opportunities for data gathering but provide objectivity (Kanuha, 2000; Patton, 2002), each researcher categorized themselves accordingly and prepared for the advantages and disadvantages of their statuses. However, because our student researchers self-categorized utilizing only one identity – which was often the identity most salient in the moment (e.g. race and nationality) – they failed to anticipate that the intersection of their identities would lead to entirely different perceptions. For example, although our female African American student researcher assumed her racial identification as an African woman and phenotypic approximation to other Black South Africans would afford her ‘insider’ status, the additional intersection of her national identity led the participants to perceive her as an ‘outsider’. Similarly, the South African student researcher believed himself to be an ‘insider’, when, in actuality, he found community members sometimes perceived him as an ‘outsider’ on the basis of gender and class.

Despite their assumed ‘insider–outsider’ statuses, the profoundly complex nature of our student researchers’ intersecting identities significantly altered how they were perceived and categorized by participants. Turgo (2013) also makes note of the influence of intersectional identities on ‘insider–outsider’ assumptions. Although he was a Philippine man conducting research in the Philippines, because he left for an extended period of time, he was considered a ‘balikbayan’, and no longer an insider. In spite of his attempts to downplay his years in the UK, he could not escape the preferential treatment he received as an ‘outside ally’. According to identity salience literature, contextual factors embedded within an environment have the ability to make some identities more salient than others (Haslam et al., 1999; Shih et al., 1999). These activated identities influence how individuals perceive and respond to their environment (Stryker and Serpe, 1982; Thoits, 2012). However, in the cases of our researchers, although the culturally different environment (for our African American researcher: South Africa, and for our South African researcher: Umbilo) activated the salience of identities that they then categorized as either ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’, the intersection of their identities garnered perceptions that were previously unanticipated, and more important, limited and/or aided how data was collected.

For example, recall the South African student researcher’s experience with the participant who felt it was inappropriate to disclose information about her health to a man. Because of his intersecting gendered identity, he was not as successful in collecting data or understanding the physical ailments of the respondent. Had he been female or had the research not been about health, perhaps the respondent would have been more transparent. Notwithstanding, despite being a born and raised South African, with familiarity with the country’s cultural nuances and socio-historical climate, our student researcher’s intersecting identity as a male – which would typically be categorized as a ‘privileged’ identity – rendered him an ‘outsider’, and as such, not privy to the respondent’s ‘private information’.

Inaccurate assumptions about ‘insider–outsider’ status also influenced how our South African researcher engaged and advised a young male participant to achieve socio-economic mobility. Despite entering this situation with the assumption that his South African status allowed him to understand what it means to matriculate through his country’s education system, his differential class identity caused him to miss the fact that as an individual from a lower socio-economic background the participant had no choice but to choose work over school. Thus, while assumptions about ‘insider–outsider’ status can be made, if all intersecting identities are not acknowledged and unpacked, misguided interactions with participants can occur. Therefore, accounting for and understanding how one’s intersecting identities may influence data collection prior to and after the execution of a study is important. Other studies of positionality echo the necessity and epistemological value of this practice (Mullings, 1999; Turgo, 2012).

Importance of self-reflexivity

Being self-aware is often the first step qualitative researchers can take to account for the impact of identity-related researcher biases (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011). The cyclical process of self-reference and examination should be conducted and documented before, during, and after research activities. That is, it is important for researchers to acknowledge their positionality and identify and unpack how their intersectional identities and related preconceived notions might shape their research interactions or interpretations of the data. In fact, from within qualitative literature, one finds self-reflexive exercises to be strongly encouraged, especially through the use of bracketing, which is identifying potential biases and minimizing their effect (Ahern, 1999). Self-reflexivity is viewed as a means through which researchers can give voice to their often silenced identities (Mosavel et al., 2011) and reduce the impact of a potentially biased lens on data collection and meaning making (Creswell, 2007). Had our student researchers engaged in more self-reflexivity, especially given the international context and presentation of differential stimuli, various pitfalls in the research (e.g. allowing the husband to sit in on the interview) may have been avoided.

Challenge: relying on existing schemas to interpret a different context

Researchers often rely on existing cognitive schemas to interpret incoming information. Although schemas provide us with frameworks to help us better organize and understand information, frameworks are byproducts of simultaneously operating identities, and thus reliance upon them, in different and unfamiliar (particularly international) contexts, can be problematic. For example, our African American student researcher assumed, based on her own gendered, national, and regional schema, that it was appropriate for a participant’s husband to sign her consent form on her behalf and contribute to her interview. Her reliance on her existing cognitive framework influenced her decision to perceive these acts as culturally appropriate and normal. In this regard, the data collection process may have been impeded by such a decision and observably contributed to a problematic ethical dilemma.

Operating from existing frameworks that are shaped by intersectional identities can make it difficult for researchers to make challenging decisions in unfamiliar contexts and can have serious implications for research processes, including data collection and ethics. But while the basis of qualitative research reminds us that it is important for us to not assume (Creswell, 2007), does one ever fail to apply one’s specific cultural/gendered/or racial lens to situations? As suggested by the presented memoirs and other research (Ahern, 1999), the answer is no. Preexisting schemas informed by interdependent identities are automatically called upon, and as constructing a schema in the moment is impossible, avoiding their activation is similarly inevitable. However, what our student researchers learned, and what is critical to recognize, is that noting the potential influence of intersectional identities on drawn conclusions or observations prior to conducting research, and/or reexamining them reflexively with a native during the data interpretation process, can assist in ‘checking’ the biases of preexisting schemas and approaching a study not necessarily objectively, but realistically. In fact, working with native researchers and/or ‘community researchers’ (individuals trained in the research protocol who represent the population of potential participants) can offer perspectives that better inform the data collection and meaning making processes (Mosavel et al., 2011). Thus, despite preexisting frameworks, researchers should always remain curious and questioning, and prepared to collect contextual information for later interpretation using self-reflexive and bracketing strategies.

Conclusion

Many researchers can identify with self-described ‘Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet’, Audre Lorde, who stated, ‘I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing and denying the other parts of the self’ (Lorde, 1984: 120). As researchers, we are often expected to do the same: to pluck out all aspects of the self aside from the ‘researcher’ as to objectively approach a phenomenon and generate unbiased data. However, as we saw in conducting qualitative research in an international setting, such a task is arguably impossible. Our interdependent identities – ostensible, covert, ‘insider’, and ‘outsider’ – shaped every aspect of the research process, in ways that were beneficial and in ways that were problematic.

Despite the contributions of the ‘insider–outsider’ approach, asking a researcher to color their identities as either ‘black or white’ in the face of simultaneously operating identities is unfair, unrealistic, and moreover, neglects to acknowledge the fact that the engendered perceptions of participants may be divergent. Indeed, the ‘insider–outsider’ continuum has provided a useful framework for the exploration of the influence of researcher positionality on research processes. Notwithstanding, our experiences indicate that an intersectionality framework, which highlights the simultaneity of intersecting identities and encompasses ‘insider–outsider’ roles, may be a more appropriate paradigm for investigating how researchers’ identities influence the production of rigorous, ethical, and transparent scholarship, both domestically and abroad.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received funding from the Virginia Commonwealth University, Global Education Office, International Partnerships Major Initiatives Award.

Author biographies

Morgan Maxwell is a doctoral candidate in Social Psychology at Virgina Commonwealth University. She earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Howard University and a master’s degree in Latin American Studies from Vanderbilt University. Her research interests broadly include examining health disparities in domestic and international settings through cultural and intersectional lenses. She also has interest in evidence-based prevention and colorism.

Jasmine Abrams is a Prevention Specialist at the Center for Cultural Experiences in Prevention in Richmond, Virginia. She is an invited speaker on her research, education, motivation, and empowerment. She received her B.S. from Virginia State University and her M.S. from Virginia Commonwealth University; both with honors. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Health Psychology. Her research interests include global health, gender roles and schemas, cultural risk and protective factors, and physical and mental health among persons of African ancestry.

Thula Zungu studied Media and Culture at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Thula’s research interests include digital media, participatory culture, and the opportunities provided by technology for the enrichment of people’s lives. His post-graduate research centered on the concept of the Information Society and culminated in a paper titled, ‘Ecological hierarchies of information: A conceptual review of the authorship around production, distribution and consumption of information’.

Maghboeba Mosavel, PhD is a health disparities researcher who conducts community-engaged research in the United States as well as internationally. Dr. Mosavel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Health. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from the University of Western Cape, South Africa, her Master of Arts degree in Communication from Cleveland State University, and her Doctoral degree in Social Welfare Policy from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. She completed a NIH/NCI postdoctoral fellowship in Behavioral Cancer Prevention and Control.

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