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Situating the Researcher inResearch Texts: Dilemmas,Questions, Ethics, NewDirectionsVaidehi RamanathanPublished online: 16 Nov 2009.

To cite this article: Vaidehi Ramanathan (2005) Situating the Researcher in ResearchTexts: Dilemmas, Questions, Ethics, New Directions, Journal of Language, Identity &Education, 4:4, 291-293, DOI: 10.1207/s15327701jlie0404_3

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Situating the Researcher in ResearchTexts: Dilemmas, Questions, Ethics,

New Directions

Vaidehi RamanathanUniversity of California, Davis

There has been, in recent years, an increasing push toward complexifying the re-searcher’s role in scenes in which he or she is embedded, and the purpose of this fo-rum is to offer nuanced explorations of some issues around this topic. Key featuresof such orientations include the importance for “researchers” to be open about themotivations and assumptions from which they are proceeding, and to openly wres-tle with ways in which their class, sexuality, and ethnic, race, or caste backgroundimpact the scene about which they write. The reasoning behind this emphasisstems partly from our growing understanding that there is no “objective,” dis-tanced observer, that as “researchers” we are an integral part of those we “study.”Some of the impetus also stems from heightened, postcolonial concerns about howbest to “speak” for other people without appropriating voices. Indeed, my use ofquote marks around “research,” “researchers,” and “study,” is crucial because theyhighlight the problematic nature of such terms, especially for those of us who en-gage in such explorations, because from our point of view such endeavours are not“studies” as much as they are extensions of our understanding of the worlds weseek to more fully comprehend.

This forum emerged from a dispute I had with a journal regarding self-reflex-ivity (addressed in some detail in my piece) and from discussions I had with thevarious authors in this forum who have each wrestled with different aspects ofthe issue. Some of the issues explored here include the following: (a) anxietiesaround speaking for others, (b) insider–outsider dichotomies and some impossi-bilities around locating the “researcher,” (c) ways in which “languaging” or writ-ing not only constructs selves but also adds layers to already existing selves (d)

JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE, IDENTITY, AND EDUCATION, 4(4), 291–320Copyright © 2005, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

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capturing multivocality without jettisoning conventional writing genres, and (e)the value of capturing the ongoing “inner monologue” of researchers in the“writing up” process. As is evident, self-reflexivity here is not presented as anunproblematic practice in which all of us “researchers” should engage (indeed,the forum assumes the importance of such “uncovering” as its default position),as much as a nuanced, complex, critical application that continually positions us(sometimes simultaneously) amid several intersecting and intertwined rhetoricalstrands, including those relating to languages, audiences, texts, voices, and strat-ifications. As Alastair Pennycook points out in his piece, we need to pay atten-tion to how our subject positions are being performed as we write; AdrianHolliday wrestles with whether and how he can speak for others or only for him-self (an issue he found himself tackling after reading Canagarajah, 1999,wherein the latter speaks of the importance of periphery scholars being directlyinvolved in the knowledge-making process instead of center scholars presumingthey can do so); Suresh Canagarajah warns about the dangers of some kinds ofpostmodernist writing that aim to capture a field’s plurality but end up commu-nicating little that is of value to the discipline; Cynthia Nelson speaks of thevalue of interspersing the author’s “inner monologue” in the writing process; andI write of insider–outsider stratifications in my “home culture” and how particu-lar kinds of self-disclosure can actually exacerbate power relations.

Divergent as our individual orientations are, we are all in this forum and com-mitted to uncovering and questioning the methodological messinesses that weare each engaged in when we “do research:” the “languaging” of it, the represen-tations of others and ourselves in it, the genres we have available to us in thewriting process, as well as the difficulties inherent in intermeshing our “re-searcher” voices with those about which we are writing and speaking. A domi-nant underlying strain through the various pieces is that it is crucial that we re-main vigilant and cross-questioning of our “researching” practices because, asPillow points out,

This vigilance from within can aid in a rethinking and questioning of the assumptiveknowledges embedded in reflexive practices in ethnographic and qualitative researchand work not to situate reflexivity as a confessional act, a cure for what ails us, or apractice that renders familiarity, but rather to situate practices of reflexivity as criticalto exposing the difficult and often uncomfortable task of leaving what is unfamiliar,unfamiliar. (2003, p. 177)

As Srinivas (2002) reminds us, “There is no way to teach the sociologist [appliedlinguist] how to be perceptive. [He] can only be sensitized to the problems thatawait him and then left to fend for himself” (p. 14). Our collective voices in this fo-rum are a step in this direction.

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REFERENCES

Canagarajah, S. (1999). Resisting linguistic imperialism in English teaching. Oxford, England: OxfordUniversity Press.

Pillow, W. (2003). Confession, catharsis, or cure?: Rethinking the uses of reflexivity as methodologicalpower in qualitative research. Qualitative Studies in Education, 16, 175–196.

Srinivas, M. (2002). The fieldworker and the field: A village in Karnataka. In M. N. Srinivas, A. M.Shah, & E. A. Ramaswamy (Eds.), The fieldworker and the field: Problems and challenges in socio-logical investigations (pp. 19–37). New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.

SOME IMPOSSIBILITIES AROUND RESEARCHERLOCATION: TENSIONS AROUND DIVERGENT

AUDIENCES, LANGUAGES, SOCIAL STRATIFICATIONS

Vaidehi RamanathanUniversity of California, Davis

In this essay on personal situatedness, I address some complexities around how I asa non-Western researcher write about, for largely Western audiences, issues relat-ing to English and vernacular education in my home communities of Gujarat, In-dia. The tensions I am interested in addressing have to do with intricacies around“locating” myself as both insider and outsider in my native communities and theWest. Some issues that I explore are as follows: (a) the importance of stating the“researcher’s” position vis-à-vis who is being written about, (b) the need to movetoward making such “uncovering” a basic element of situated research, and (c)some local issues on the ground that make it impossible for (postcolonial) re-searchers like myself to ever fully “locate” themselves, split as they sometimes arebetween communities, audiences, social stratifications, and languages. These areall issues that have been haunting me for the last several years and that I am tryingto clarify for myself as I go on in the field.

Some aspects of these questions came to the surface recently when I found thatthe editors of a journal scheduled to publish one of my articles had deleted an entireparagraph in which I directly addressed my relative positioning vis-à-vis the teach-ers and students about which I was writing. This was done without my knowledge,and I discovered this deletion when I was reading the proofs. When asked about it,the editors informed me that the paragraph was deemed “irrelevant” by all the re-viewers. Although the rest of the article had occasional references to me and myrole in the “researching scene,” this was a paragraph in which I addressed aspectsof my background more fully and directly than anywhere else. Towardcontextualizing this issue and partially addressing some of the aforementioned

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