Negotiating Insider and Outsider Identities in the Field: “Insider” in a Foreign Land;...

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DOI: 10.1177/1525822X09349919 2010; 22; 16 originally published online Nov 18, 2009; Field Methods

Ayça Ergun and Aykan Erdemir in a Foreign Land; "Outsider" in One’s Own Land

Negotiating Insider and Outsider Identities in the Field: "Insider"

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DOI: 10.1177/1525822X09349919http://fm.sagepub.com

Negotiating Insider and Outsider Identities in the Field: “Insider” in a Foreign Land; “Outsider” in One’s Own Land

Ayça Ergun1 and Aykan Erdemir1

Abstract

The authors present a self-reflexive and comparative account of their fieldwork experiences in Azerbaijan and Turkey to examine insider and out-sider identities of researchers in settings that are neither unfamiliar nor fully familiar. It is argued that the researcher is often suspended in a betwixt-and-between position in the transformative process. This position is not necessarily a transitional one that leads to either the inclusion or exclusion of researchers by informants. Rather, the insider-outsider relationship can be conceived as a dialectical one that is continuously informed by the differentiating perceptions that researchers and informants have of themselves and others.

Keywords

fieldwork, insiderness, outsiderness, researcher’s identity

Introduction

In ethnographic literature, the implications of fieldwork for researchers are dis-cussed with reference to the transformation of researcher identities along the continuum between insiderness and outsiderness. If one discusses researcher

1Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey

Corresponding Author:Ayça Ergun, Department of Sociology, Middle East Technical University, Ankara 06531, TurkeyEmail: [email protected]



Ergun and Erdemir 17

identities with reference to the existence of objective and a priori categories of insider and outsider, this would lead to a simplistic binary divide between the two statuses. As Kusow argued, the “relationship between researcher and participant cannot be determined a priori such that a researcher can be cate-gorically designated either an insider or an outsider” (2003:597). Beginning from a primordial and static conceptualization of insiderness and outsider-ness does not fully explain the complexity and ambivalence of the researcher’s transformative experiences in the field. The ethnographic field “is an arena for intersubjective interaction” (Paerregaard 2002:331), and researcher statuses emerge “from the interaction between the researcher and the partici-pants as well as the social and political situation within which the interaction occurs” (Kusow 2003:597).

The consequences of being an insider and outsider in the field are dis-cussed and illustrated in many works in qualitative methodology. Merton (1972) is one of the first scholars to point out the pitfalls of a static under-standing of insider and outsider statuses. He argued that “the idiomatic expression of total Insider doctrine—one must be one in order to understand one—is deceptively simple and sociologically fallacious (just as we shall see is the case with the total Outsider doctrine)” (p. 24). Merton’s words of cau-tion were inspired by the aphorism “one need not be Caesar in order to understand Caesar,” which he borrowed from Simmel by way of Weber (1972:n. 31). Simmel’s contribution is limited to refuting the argument not only that it is necessary to be an insider to understand properly (à la verstehen) but also that a “stranger” might have certain advantages that the insiders do not have: “The [stranger’s] distance . . . indicates that one who is close by is remote, but his strangeness indicates that one who is remote is near” (2002:30-34).

Since then, various studies have been published probing insider/outsider relations in qualitative research (Bolak 1996; Naples 1996; Adams 1999; De Andrade 2000; Merriam et al. 2001; Sherif 2001; Paerregaard 2002; Kusow 2003; Allen 2004; Shahbazi 2004; DeVault 1995; Brodsky and Faryal 2006; Guevarra 2006; Mahoney 2007; Rashid 2007). Researchers are said to have insider or semi-insider status by nature of their indigenous, native, or bicul-tural status, whereas being an outsider is often equated with being a stranger or foreigner. One can hardly deny the potential advantages of being an insider, keeping in mind that there can also be disadvantages to being an insider. The insider, for example, may be perceived as being untrustworthy because of his or her knowledge of and connections to the community under study. Wolf also listed the following problems experienced by insiders because of their positionality: “concealment of information,” “crossing caste



18 Field Methods 22(1)

lines,” “the restricting expectations of others,” and “overidentification and merging and the resultant lack of privacy” (1996:15).

For the insider, shared citizenship, ethnic, linguistic, religious, gender, and cultural identities or simply affinities facilitate the researcher’s access to the field. Such common ground has the potential to increase the perceived trustworthiness of the researcher while also ensuring openness on the part of the respondents, thereby facilitating rapport. Informants tend to benefit from cultural proximity and so are willing to share information more easily. The treatment of the researcher as one of their own might, however, result in ascribing to him or her the role of representing the community (Kusow 2003). Many researchers neither consider themselves to be nor want to be advocates for the communities they investigate and limit their efforts to understanding and interpretation. Representing a community is a complicated matter, par-ticularly in cases in which competing groups within a community have quite contradictory demands concerning its ideal portrayal. Moreover, the researcher can also be expected to defend the “cultural intimacy” by not revealing inti-mate secrets that could be embarrassing to the community at large (Herzfeld 1997).

The degree of a scholar’s insiderness, or the degree to which scholars manage to overcome their outsiderness, is believed to determine easy access to informants, reliability of collected data, and the success of the fieldwork. Yet it is stressed that the identities of researchers in the field are in constant negotiation with the informants. As Naples argued, insiderness and outsid-erness are “ever-shifting and permeable social locations,” “negotiated and renegotiated in particular, everyday interactions,” that are “embedded in local processes that reposition . . . socially constructed distinctions” (1996:84). Similarly, Kusow characterized insider/outsider distinction to be “frequently situational, depending on the prevailing social, political, and cultural values of a given social context” (2003:592). Parameswaran further stated that “the process of conduction fieldwork . . . calls for negotiations of power relation-ships between researchers and people they encounter in the field” (2001:69).

Perceptions about the researchers also shape the web of relationships constructed in the field. Scholars address a number of factors that inform the nature of the interaction between researchers and informants. These include class (Bolak 1996; Mahoney 2007), nationality (Adams 1999), race and ethnicity (DeVault 1995; De Andrade 2000; Guevarra 2006), religious background (Sherif 2001; Erdemir 2004; Mahoney 2007), age (Adams 1999), gender (Easterday et al. 1977; Gurney 1985; Bolak 1996; Naples 1996; Horn 1997; Parameswaran 2001), marital status (Friedl 1986), and profession (Ceglowski 2000). The factors above, on their own, do play a significant role




in shaping the outcome of the fieldworker’s negotiation of his or her insi-derness or outsiderness. The interplay among different factors presents researchers and informants with unexpected encounters and complicates the negotiation and its outcome.

The aim of this article is to investigate conceptualizations discussing the scholar’s rite of passage in the field based on a binary opposition between insiders and outsiders. The continuum between these two fixed points is also accompanied by a dichotomous formal and legal status (i.e., citizenship), which can further complicate the position of the researcher as well as the analysis. Just as there are various context-dependent in-group/out-group or insider/outsider positions among the peoples scholars study, there are various field contexts of being an insider or an outsider for the researcher as well. Not only are these field contexts conceptualized by the researchers, they are defined by the informants.

This article is based on a comparative analysis of our respective field-work projects in Azerbaijan and Turkey, which we started in 1997 and continued between 1999 and 2001. Since then, we have both carried out subsequent research in our respective field sites and maintained close con-tact with our informants. Ergun, a Turkish citizen, was involved in research in Azerbaijan, a country that shares historical, ethnic, and linguistic affinities with Turkey (Ergun 2002). Erdemir, also a Turkish citizen, conducted field research in his own country (Erdemir 2004, 2005b). As a nonpracticing Sunni Muslim, he studied Turkey’s Alevi religious community, which dif-fers from the country’s Sunni majority in its various religious, social, and cultural practices (Yaman and Erdemir 2006). Here, we illustrate the transfor-mative process through our experiences of conducting fieldwork in settings that were neither unfamiliar nor fully familiar. The fact that we were already partial insiders or insiders in certain respects helps us investigate the fluid and ambivalent identities we were ascribed with, embodied, and had to per-form vis-à-vis the informants. We carry out this task through a self-reflexive presentation of our field experiences within a comparative perspective (see Roberts and Sanders 2005). A comparative juxtaposition, we argue, has the potential to highlight the different ways in which researchers and their identities are negotiated subsequent to various challenges encountered in the field. Such a comparison provides opportunities to examine the range of outcomes of the interplay of factors in different but not fully unfamiliar field settings.

In this article, we address the following questions: How do researchers negotiate their insider and outsider identities with their respondents? How might an insider or partial insider identity facilitate or obstruct the rapport




with and understanding of the communities under study? How do intersecting dimensions of identity shape researchers’ relations in the field? What are the relative advantages of liminality and partial inclusion for a balanced presen-tation of emic and etic insights during the fieldwork?

Fieldwork Contexts and the Perception of Researchers’ IdentitiesErgun studied state-society relations in the post-Soviet democratization of Azerbaijan. She carried out participant observation and conducted in-depth interviews with the political elite and representatives of the civil society in Baku. Erdemir studied faith-based collective action in Alevi organizations, namely, associations and foundations, mainly in Istanbul, through participant observation and interviews with the organizational elite and their followers.

Alevis, who constitute roughly 20% (14 million) of Turkey’s popula-tion, are a non-Sunni religious community comprising Turkish, Kurmanji, Zaza, and Arabic speakers (Yaman and Erdemir 2006). Because the liberal beliefs and practices of Alevis—particularly gender equality, consumption of alcohol, and the use of music and dance in worship—have been per-ceived to be in violation of the Sunni orthodoxy and orthopraxis, Alevis have suffered persecution at the hands of the Sunni-dominated Ottoman state since the 16th century. Although the establishment of the secular Turk-ish republic in 1923 improved the sociopolitical prospects of Alevis, Sunni-conservative values and principles have continued to dominate the Turkish public and its politics. Alevis, therefore, still experience significant dis-crimination and marginalization. Alevi support for left-wing politics since the 1960s has further distanced Alevis from the Sunni majority, which predomi-nantly supports right-wing parties, and significantly deepened the sectarian cleavage in Turkey, leading to numerous intersectarian clashes.

Azerbaijan is a former Soviet Socialist Republic neighboring Turkey. It is an ethnically and religiously heterogeneous country in which Shi’i Azerbaijanis constitute the majority. They are considered “Turkic-speaking people” (Swietochowski 1995:1) or “ethnically and linguistically Turkic” (Wimbush 1979:61) and were called Turks until 1937 (Altstadt 1992). As a result of Stalinist policies of Sovietization, the majority population (Turks) came to be called Azerbaijanis, whereas the ethnic minorities of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic kept their own names. The current constitution of the Republic of Azerbaijan refers to the citizens as Azerbaijanis. In popular parlance, however, two other terms are also used to name the people: Turks or Azerbaijani Turks.




The post-Soviet transition of Azerbaijan has included three government changes and a series of challenges, including attempts at coup d’états, a long period of instability, interethnic and interstate conflicts in the Karabagh region, Armenian occupation of 20% of its territory, and the subsequent refu-gee problems. In the preindependence period, the Turkish national liberation movement and the establishment of an independent, democratic, and secular republic in 1923 inspired the Azerbaijani political and intellectual elite in their struggle for independence. The discourse of the nationalist indepen-dence movement led by the People’s Front of Azerbaijan included a strong emphasis on the closeness of the two countries. Turkey and Azerbaijan are often characterized as being “one nation but two states” by leaders of the two countries.

At the time of our respective research projects (late 1990s), there were few studies on Azerbaijani political transformation and religio-political mobiliza-tion of Turkish Alevis. To a great extent, our insights about our field of inquiry were limited to a literature review about the communities in question. Therefore, we had limited exposure to scholarly knowledge and everyday information about the communities we were about to enter. In this respect, we considered ourselves outsiders while acknowledging cultural, social, and linguistic affinities that might facilitate our access to the field. In other words, factors existed that could make us partial insiders, as opposed to foreign researchers. However, we did not know how this partial identity would be interpreted by our informants. During our fieldwork, we both found ourselves being considered more insiders than outsiders. This did not necessarily over-lap with our presuppositions about our insider/outsider relationships.

Before the field encounter, we were aware of our partial insider identity. The Azerbaijani language is perceived by many Azerbaijanis and Turks to be a dialect of Turkish. Azerbaijani and Turkish are mutually intelligible to a great extent. Therefore, for Ergun, who became fluent in Azerbaijani after a few weeks in the field, language did not constitute a barrier, nor did she face great challenges in cultural adaptation. However, she was not fully aware of the meanings attributed to Turkishness and the representa-tions of Turkish identity in Azerbaijan, which were crucial in facilitating her becoming an insider. Many Azerbaijanis see Turks as brothers and their closest allies. Turkey was the first country to recognize Azerbaijan’s inde-pendence after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its political support to the Azerbaijani government on the territorial dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the former Azerbaijani enclave Nagorno-Karabagh (De Waal 2004; Broers 2005) provides Turkey with enormous prestige among the population.




The level of Azerbaijani knowledge and awareness about the Turks of Turkey is much higher than Turks’ knowledge of Azerbaijan and Azerbaijanis. Although it was not uncommon for some Turkish citizens to associate Azerbaijanis with Russians, particularly in the early years of Azerbaijan’s independence, for Azerbaijanis, familiarity with Turkish history, literature, and culture was widespread. For these reasons, Ergun was rarely treated as an outsider. When she met her landlady for the first time after moving into her apartment in Baku, the landlady realized that Ergun was actually not a for-eigner but a Turk. She said, “We thought that a foreigner would be moving into the flat. If we had known that you were Turkish, we would not have locked up our valuables and would have made sure to prepare dinner for your first night.” She then invited Ergun upstairs to her own apartment and asked her whether she would like to call her parents back in Turkey. She even wanted to talk to Ergun’s parents to assure them that their daughter was in good hands and that she would be taking good care of her. During Ergun’s first couple of days in the city, a member of the landlady’s family accompa-nied her to make sure that she would not get lost. The very welcoming attitudes and openness of the locals, which resulted mainly from her citi-zenship identity, paved the way for good rapport to be established easily. Yet before going into the field, this was neither immediately apparent nor reciprocal on her part. Thus, the presumed distance on the part of Ergun was eliminated by her informants’ perception about who she was.

Erdemir, a Turkish citizen carrying out research among the Alevi religious community in Turkey, was a native anthropologist involved in “homework” (i.e., fieldwork in one’s own country). However, informants ascribed him a status different from that ascribed to Turkish scholars based in Turkey because he resided in the United States, which was to some extent an alienat-ing factor. Most of Erdemir’s Alevi informants had negative views of the United States because the U.S. government was seen as the mastermind of the counterinsurgency campaign in Turkey during the Cold War, which led to the imprisonment, torture, and assassination of numerous leftists, many of whom were Alevis. There were numerous occasions when Erdemir’s infor-mants asked him, often in a humorous manner, about his relationship to the United States and U.S. institutions. Erdemir was expected to provide con-vincing answers to questions such as, “Who provides funding for this research in America?” “Did you choose to study Alevis, or were you asked to do so?” and “Are the American authorities interested in your findings?” Erdemir was always ready to play along with his informants’ challenges questioning his loyalties and responded repeatedly in a humorous but convincing way. He was, therefore, welcomed even by radical leftists despite his suspicious




connection to the United States. At one of the Alevi gatherings, where Erdemir was invited to talk about his research, he was introduced to the public as “our comrade who works as an intern in the United States.” The category of intern signified that Erdemir was in the United States temporarily and that his loyal-ties ultimately lay with Turkey. Overall, Erdemir’s Turkishness was the most important factor bridging the gap with his informants. His citizenship set him apart and made him less suspicious than the numerous U.S. and European researchers who were also studying Alevis.

Erdemir’s unmarked middle-class and urban Turkish, accent however, singled him out among his informants. Erdemir, who was born and raised in the Turkish-speaking northwestern urban centers of Bursa and Istanbul, was perceived as belonging to a different social milieu from Alevi migrants in Istanbul who were predominantly from the Zaza- and Kurmanji-speaking rural areas of eastern Turkey. In this respect, regional differentiation in Turkey constituted another dimension distancing the native anthropologist from his compatriots. The fact that quite a number of Erdemir’s migrant informants could either speak or understand Zaza or Kurmanji, two lan-guages associated with Kurdishness in Turkey, further distanced Erdemir, who did not speak these languages, from them. Until recently, many people in Turkey perceived Kurmanji and Zaza as dialects of the Kurdish language. Lately, however, significant numbers of Zaza speakers have begun to argue that Zaza is a language separate from Kurdish (Paul 1998). Many of Erdemir’s Zaza- or Kurmanji-speaking Alevi informants did not necessarily identify themselves as Kurds and were quite insistent that they were Turks. In other words, these informants’ emphasis on Turkishness as a category of citizenship served as common ground with Erdemir. Their language proficiency, how-ever, set them apart from Erdemir, whom they considered the “monolingual” researcher whose Turkishness did not necessarily ensure that he shared the same linguistic and cultural identity. Although various sociolinguistic, regional, linguistic, and cultural factors distanced Erdemir from his infor-mants, the most vital factor in establishing rapport was the researcher’s commitment to the same homeland, as symbolized by his desire to settle in Turkey after he finished his graduate studies.

These partial insider identities had to be continuously negotiated in the construction of the relationship between the researchers and their informants after the initial contact. This negotiation process was informed by a number of factors in both of our research projects. These included dealing with the insider identity attributed to the researchers and the informants’ treatment of the researchers that played a role in the ways in which researchers attempted to maintain neutrality, negotiated distance with informants, and dealt with ascribed responsibilities stemming from being partial insiders.




Negotiating between Insider and Outsider Identities

Negotiation can take place in diverse ways and at various levels (De Andrade 2000; Guevarra 2006). These ways and levels can be complicated when the researcher has an ambiguous insider/outsider status, as exemplified by our cases. These can be seen as (1) embracing commonalities and denying differ-ences to fulfill the expectations of natives from a partial insider (performing/embodying the identity of a partial insider), (2) addressing concerns related to preserving neutrality, and (3) revealing conflicting political preferences.

The classification and treatment of field researchers as insiders require negotiations that revolve around the strategic highlighting of commonalities and the downplaying of differences. The perceived insider identity of Ergun was defined mainly through selective references to the shared Turkishness between her and the informants. Therefore, the insider status was conferred through an emphasis on commonalities. In Erdemir’s case, on the contrary, the perceived insider identity was delineated not only through an emphasis on shared secular republican values but also through his disassociation from stereotypical characteristics associated with Sunnis.

Commonalities and DifferencesIn Ergun’s case, the insider status is provided on the basis of the meanings attributed to Turkishness. Although Turks and Azerbaijanis do not share the experiences of living in the same state with common territory, the signifi-cance of a shared Turkic identity was perceived to a much greater extent by the Azerbaijanis. Cultural affinities lead to the immediate treatment of a Turkish researcher as an insider. Moreover, linguistic affinities, as high-lighted by the mutual intelligibility of Turkish and Azerbaijani, strengthened the Azerbaijani convictions of a shared identity and further consolidated the insider status of Ergun. For example, Ergun’s informants often told her that “Azerbaijan and Turkey are one nation and two states,” repeating a formula that was frequently reiterated by the leaders of these two countries. Although this way of thinking would not have occurred to Ergun in Turkey, she came to acknowledge it in the field and felt the extent to which she was considered an insider. The alleged presence of common enemies is another factor high-lighting commonality. Shared historical heritage includes the enmity of Armenians stemming from disagreement about the nature and characteriza-tion of intercommunal conflicts in the late Ottoman period, being subject to Armenian threats and attacks (e.g., the assassination of Turkish diplomats by Armenian terrorists) between 1973 and 1994; and the occupation of the




Azerbaijani territory of Karabagh by Armenians. The presence of a common enemy strengthens the bonds of solidarity between Turkey and Azerbaijan, which fosters the sense of a shared identity.

Erdemir, whose secular identity and views played an important role in facilitating his access to intimate Alevi gatherings, was perceived by his informants as an insider among the ranks of the secularist faction in Turkey. Alevis often consider themselves and are often considered by others as being naturally inclined and predisposed toward secularism in Turkey. Navaro-Yashin, for example, presented an account of middle-class secularist Turks who perceive Alevis, “the primordial inhabitants of Anatolia,” as “the society of Ataturkism” (2002:146). In this respect, secular republican values were conceived to be the main commonality, whereas stereotypical characteristics (i.e., conservative social and cultural values, patriarchal views, and a right-wing political orientation) that Alevis attribute to observant Sunnis were used to disassociate Erdemir from them. Erdemir’s disassociation from observant Sunnis was facilitated during conversations in which he was asked to com-ment on the encounter between Sunnis and Alevis revolving around these topics. The Sivas pogrom of 1993, for example, in which a Sunni mob set fire to a hotel, killing the participants of a local Alevi festival, was often brought to Erdemir’s attention, particularly during the annual commemora-tive ceremonies. Erdemir, therefore, was frequently asked to acknowledge and highlight the ongoing Alevi victimization at the hands of Sunni “bigots” (yobazlar), which reaffirmed his commonality with the informants.

As can be seen from the field experiences of Ergun and Erdemir, com-monalities and differences work in various ways to fulfill the expectations of natives from partial insiders. For the field researchers, the negotiation of their ambiguous insider identities entails the embodiment and performance of char-acteristics that are expected of them by the informants. In some cases, this can be realized through emphasizing commonality with natives; in other cases, it is the differences from nonnatives that need to be emphasized.

NeutralityConcerns related to preserving neutrality stem from scholarly, pragmatic, and ethical motivations. There are two main reasons to maintain a certain level of distance from the informants. First, although researchers want to go native to some extent to grasp the emic perspective, it is important to keep a certain level of distance for the sake of not losing their etic insights. Second, preserv-ing distance is one of the crucial dimensions of ensuring continuing access to conflicting power factions in the field and building a trusting relationship




with the informants. These two issues would, at least, help preserve neutral-ity. However, as the relationship between the researcher and the informant is an uneasy one, the former is often required to take sides and declare his or her allegiance. For instance, the dichotomy between the government and the opposition in Azerbaijan has led to a bitter and entrenched polarization. One should always be wary when conducting fieldwork in an authoritarian con-text because this necessitates avoiding making public statements or even simple comments about a specific event or person.

Ergun had to prove that as a neutral researcher, she was not there to judge any of the political factions. She tried very hard to avoid making judgments, especially when her identity as an academic and expert caused her to be ques-tioned by the members of both the government and the opposition about what she thought of their adversaries. For example, she was repeatedly asked by the progovernment elite whether she was also talking with the opposition. When she responded affirmatively, the most common reaction was, “Of course, you have to talk to them and see who they really are!” For both groups, Ergun’s denouncement of the other faction would have meant appre-ciation and approval. Considering their tense relationships, one improperly used word could have damaged Ergun’s relationship with each group and caused her to be considered a member of the opposing faction. Thus, “I am not here to judge” was Ergun’s most repeated sentence during the fieldwork. Honest statements on her part eventually would have become an obstacle to her access to the field.

For Erdemir, the issue of preserving neutrality had to do with intra-Alevi affairs rather than national politics. The Alevi organizations that Erdemir studied were involved in a bitter struggle against each other, although they initially had been mobilized to advocate for Alevi rights in the face of Sunni persecution. At times, cleavages among various Alevi factions seemed to be deeper than the separation between Alevis and the Sunni establishment. In moments of heightened intra-Alevi conflict and polemic, Erdemir, a non-practicing and secular Sunni, was perceived by various Alevis as an ideal arbiter whose outsider and disengaged status ensured that his judgments on intra-Alevi conflicts were unbiased and impartial. There were, therefore, frequent demands for Erdemir to comment on sensitive issues pertaining to the position, policies, and discourses of different Alevi organizations and leaders. An honest opinion is the least that Erdemir could offer to show his gratitude for the hospitality and welcome that he had so far received from the informants. However, the opinion of Erdemir, the neutral arbiter, was usually expressed in a convoluted and unintelligible manner so that his image of neutrality vis-à-vis different Alevi factions and organizations could




be protected. In short, the various Alevi demands from Erdemir were a threat to his neutrality vis-à-vis other, rival Alevi organizations. Thus, Erdemir ended up being a dual persona, combining a demure attitude with regard to intra-Alevi conflicts and a chatty and bold comportment concerning extra-communal dealings.

The need to be neutral is contextual. Had Erdemir been neutral in regard to Sunni-Alevi matters, his fieldwork might have been less successful, whereas Ergun’s efforts to preserve her neutrality facilitated the conduct of her fieldwork. Preserving neutrality is not an easy task, particularly in set-tings in which there are strong polarizations, dichotomies, and/or conflicts. Maintaining a neutral position necessitates constant efforts on the researcher’s part to balance attempts to become an insider, on one hand, and to preserve the distance, on the other.

Revealing Conflicting Political PreferencesPolitics is a sensitive topic in most settings and often makes field research-ers feel uneasy. Many researchers, even those who are otherwise politically engaged, try not to get involved in or comment on everyday politics when in the field. Although some fear that political polemics might damage the delicate rapport they have established with their informants, others might be more concerned about their personal security or research permit. Thus, in addition to avoiding conversation about everyday politics, some might even put on a mask of naiveté or ignorance. However, when researchers have a degree of partial insider identity, this mask can hardly be convincing or of any positive use. There could be certain contexts wherein researchers might be asked to take sides, particularly in cases in which there are dominant dichotomies in a society. Drury and Scott argued that “aligning oneself to one group is itself a bias and seems to conflict the usual stated aim of the social scientific research to put distance between the researcher and the researched. Second, such a role seems to entail acting as an advocate in the wider society in which the intergroup conflict is situated” (2001:50–51).

For instance, there might be demand from the informants for the research-ers to acknowledge or recognize the righteousness, justness, or legitimacy of the informants’ causes and/or the wickedness or illegitimacy of the causes of the informants’ others (i.e., the recognition of the Azerbaijani opposition’s legitimate struggle for democratization against the existing government or the wickedness of Sunni conservative bigots who discriminate against and vic-timize Alevis). The failure or unwillingness to share views about such political issues may result in damaging the trust and credibility of researchers.




Ergun was treated by most of her informants as having the same political preferences as them. In Azerbaijan, most politicians Ergun encountered con-sidered themselves right wing. It was rare for politicians to define themselves as left wing, because this was predominantly associated with being a com-munist. Being a communist was associated with Azerbaijan’s Soviet past and the Communist Party rule, which signified authoritarianism, dictator-ship, oppression, and the restriction of rights and liberties to most informants. Post-Soviet political engagement, on the other hand, is based on the denial of and/or reaction against the communist past (Altstadt 1994). Being right wing, then, had nationalist connotations. The epithet “nationalist” was asso-ciated with being proindependence, anticommunist, and a democrat, denoting an active struggle against Soviet rule (Ergun 2002).

It was difficult for the informants to believe that Ergun could have been studying their country without having political motivations. Part of their assumption arose because many of the informants had earlier encountered pan-Turkists of Turkey who were mainly motivated by the independence of the so-called Turkic brethren and wanted to strengthen their relationship with all Turkic republics. Azerbaijan offered an easy point of entry and access due to ethnic and linguistic affinities. So, in most cases, Ergun was assumed to be either right wing and/or a nationalist. Even when the informants did not assume a shared political orientation with the researcher, this did not have a negative impact on their relationship. Ergun became acutely aware of this when she was invited to present a lecture at an Azerbaijani university. The professor who had invited Ergun knew that she was a social democrat. Because any type of left-wing politics was identified as communist in Azerbaijan, the host introduced Ergun in the following manner: “Although she is a communist, she conducted numerous successful research projects in our country.” Even though Ergun’s unorthodox political preferences did not constitute a major challenge for establishing rapport with her informants, she nevertheless remained reluctant to express her position.

Erdemir’s secular and social democratic political orientation was an important facilitator of his access to Alevis, who were usually wary of schol-ars of Sunni background. In an era of increasing Sunni conservative interest in Alevis, many of Erdemir’s Alevi informants were quite disturbed by the political and religious agenda of conservative Sunni scholars, many of whom employed a normative theological framework (Erdemir 2005a). In a research environment of such political and sectarian tension, Erdemir’s religious and political orientation was often put to the test by informants through a variety of means, such as offering him alcoholic drinks or checking whether he could sing along to leftist songs or answer trivia questions about the leftist political




tradition. Although Erdemir was enthusiastic in playing along with these challenges to demonstrate his secular and leftist political orientation, he was very careful about not taking part in intra-left polemics that seemed to domi-nate most Alevi conversations. Many of the bitter conflicts within the Alevi community had to do with intra-left cleavages and rivalries. Taking sides in such entrenched battles would have inevitably distanced Erdemir from many of his informants. When confronted with strong demands to provide an eval-uation of the latest leftist polemics, Erdemir consistently tried to maintain an interested position (albeit an unengaged and nonpartisan one) by declaring his support for united action among leftist factions.

To conclude, although most researchers try not to get involved in local politics in the field, there might be instances wherein they are attributed political stances by the informants despite the researchers’ attempts to hide their political orientations. Alternatively, it might be necessary for research-ers to reveal their positions on certain political issues to ensure access and facilitate rapport.

Age, Gender, and Profession in Shaping Insider-Outsider IdentityIn shaping relations between researchers and informants, age, gender, and professional status play important roles. In our cases, the interplay of these factors determined the informants’ attitudes toward us. Both cultural distinc-tiveness and the interplay of identities will be illustrated below through a discussion of our experiences in the field, with particular focus on age, gender, marital status, profession, and level of education.

Roles of Researchers’ Age and GenderAs Van Maanen pointed out, “women (or men) in the field . . . find some doors open more readily than others” (1988:4). In the study of Muslim com-munities, which are known for being predominantly gender segregated, most fieldworkers expect to have greater access to informants of the same sex (Saktanber 2002). Male researchers, in particular, do not hope to have much access to female informants. As for female researchers, they might often find it difficult to conduct research in male-dominated settings (Berik 1996; Wolf 1996). A woman researcher, however, can pass as an “honorary male” and have some degree of access to men’s spaces (Hutheesing 1993).

We did not have much difficulty in gaining access to or establishing rap-port with informants of the opposite sex. This, to a great extent, had to do




with the fact that we were studying secular countries. Although Azerbaijan is a country with a strong patriarchal culture, the scope of participation of women in the public sphere is quite high, owing to the persistence of de jure gender equality institutionalized under Soviet rule. Erdemir’s research in Turkey, where gender segregation and patriarchy is known to create prob-lems for researchers, was facilitated by the strong rhetoric of gender equality and active participation of women in public life among the Alevi community he studied.

Studies of identities of field researchers often refer to gender identity as a factor that may facilitate or hinder access (Gurney 1991:54–56). Two extremes of the treatment of a female researcher are either failing to take her seriously or providing her with extra care and protection. Female researchers who work in particularly male-dominated settings often find it difficult to be treated equally by their male informants (Easterday et al. 1977; Gurney 1991). Yet authors argue that a female researcher can be treated as harmless and non-threatening, which would facilitate access (Gurney 1991:54; Horn 1997:300).

There can be situations in which the position of the female researcher can be challenged by her relative inferior social status vis-à-vis male infor-mants. For example, Ergun had to conduct interviews with the Azerbaijani political elite including ministers, deputies, and party leaders while she was a postgraduate student. Most of the Azerbaijani deputies were not only quite surprised but also highly appreciative of meeting a young female Turkish student conducting her research in a place that, in their opinion, was far away from her country. Special prestige attributed to Turkishness contributed not only to the treatment of Ergun as an insider but also to the great care and attention shown to her.

Being a foreigner also granted Ergun the status of a guest. This led her hosts to treat her with care, a care that would not have been granted, for instance, to a young female Azerbaijani student. Adams, a U.S. national car-rying out research in Uzbekistan, similarly highlighted the importance of being a guest in non-Western countries and how the guest status provided her with a range of opportunities and challenges through which she had access to information and contacts (Adams 1999:342–43, 350). The prestige conferred on Adams, however, is different from the prestige bestowed on Ergun. Adams’s nationality caused her to be treated as someone to be impressed (Adams 1999:347), but Ergun’s nationality facilitated informants’ treatment of her as an insider who was to be assisted and protected.

Because of all these factors, the Azerbaijani deputies not only facilitated Ergun’s access to the other deputies (i.e., phoning others on her behalf or referring her to others) but also generously provided materials that were hard




to find in bookshops. Ergun heard conversations such as, “There is this young girl who came all the way from Turkey to write her thesis. It is our duty to help her,” “A young Turkish lady wants to learn about us,” or “She is a guest from Turkey; we owe her this help.” Because of her young age, some depu-ties often showed her a protective attitude, an attitude that Easterday et al. would define as “paternalistic” (1977). A few of them said, “You are not only our guest but also our daughter,” or “We feel responsible toward your parents. So take good care of yourself and call us whenever you need some-thing.” Some even introduced Ergun to their daughters so that she could socialize with female friends and thereby not get bored in a foreign country.

The political elite’s treatment of Ergun was not in accordance with tradi-tional gender values. In Azerbaijani society, women are often seen as fragile people to be treated with care. This leads men to be restrictive toward the activities of their wives and daughters in public. However, it does not neces-sarily mean that the men are unaccepting toward other women’s presence and involvement in the public sphere. Ergun, for example, never felt any sexist treatment or experienced discriminatory behavior in Azerbaijan. Male politi-cians, who would normally be less tolerant and accepting, for instance, to the involvement of their own daughters in field research in a foreign country, were quite appreciative and understanding of Ergun’s efforts. Moreover, fra-gility associated with womanhood facilitated her data collection process as the respondents were quite open to offer any help. Gurney argued that to what extent gender plays a role in shaping of insider/outsider relationship depends on the period spent in the field (1991). In Ergun’s case, the more time she spent in the field, the more her vulnerable position as a “young girl” was replaced by that of a “man-like woman” (kişi kimi qadın). This characteriza-tion of a woman as a man is associated with power. Her experience in and her accumulated knowledge of Azerbaijan made her more powerful.

In the case of Erdemir, the strong rhetoric of gender equality and the active participation of women in Alevi public life enabled him to interact freely with female informants of all ages, married or single, in various contexts such as religious ceremonies, meetings, weddings, shrine visits, picnics, or concerts. Women were as willing as, and no less informed than, men to speak to him on Alevism. Yet there was a mismatch between the gender egalitarian discourse of Alevis and its actual practice. Men and male opinions dominated Alevi organizations.

Erdemir’s married status was one of the most important issues in deter-mining the nature of his interaction with informants, especially the younger and female ones. The fact that Erdemir’s wife did not wear a veil and that she participated in many of the activities in Alevi organizations and interacted




with the youth, whether through dancing at Alevi weddings or drinking alco-hol at Alevi bars, marked the couple as secular. The interaction of a Sunni man with women is an important criterion the Alevis use to determine whether the man is religiously conservative and therefore suspect. Erdemir’s informants pointed out quite a few times that certain Sunni scholars were not worthy of trust and provided evidence by saying, “He does not shake hands with women,” “His wife is veiled,” or “He is so disturbed in the com-pany of women that his eyes are constantly focused on the ground since he fears making eye contact with women.”

The literature frequently highlights the challenging nature of gender, par-ticularly for female researchers. Gender, however, is not always an obstacle limiting access and building of trust but can be a facilitator in some contexts. Patriarchal values of informants, which can be manifested in their protective attitudes toward female scholars, for example, could end up becoming an advantage. We argue that rather than gender alone, it is often its interplay with other factors such as age, marital status, and profession that shape researchers’ relations in the field.

Roles of Professional Identity and Level of EducationIn our field studies, special prestige was attributed to our professional iden-tities. Our academic credentials as well as the objectivity associated with scientists contributed to our trustworthiness in the eyes of the informants. Thus, the process of building trust was facilitated to some extent by the informants’ perceptions of the academics’ professional identity. Moreover, to be interviewed by an academic provided interviewees with a sense of self-respect. Many perceived being the subject of a scientific study as the recognition of their personalities and the treatment of their views as valuable. This perceived sensitivity on the part of the researchers, not only to their opinions but also to their problems, provided us with relatively easy access to the field.

Anthropologists’ professional identities, however, do not facilitate building trust in all cases. Shahbazi, for example, mentioned that during his fieldwork in Iran, his informants had “somewhat a dismissive attitude towards this kind of work, or even a mistrust of anybody studying other people closely” (2004:595). In the Iranian context, anthropologists “were seen as living and working in unattractive places and studying the life ways of ‘backward’ people to no obviously reasonable purpose” (Shahbazi 2004:596). Thus, Shahbazi’s professional identity made him “an insider with the difficulties of an outsider” (2004:599).




Building trust is also challenging in post-Soviet geography. The authoritar-ian heritage of the Soviet Union, which persists to some extent in post-Soviet countries, makes people feel uncomfortable about sharing their views in public. In Azerbaijan, there is a further obstacle resulting from the binary divide in politics between government and the opposition. In a highly polar-ized political environment, a researcher often feels the challenge of having access to both groups while also making sure that she or he is not perceived as supporting one of the opposing camps. These potential sources of suspicion were at work in the case of Ergun. It was, therefore, hard for an outsider to present herself as an objective person and to prove her neutrality in her attempts to develop equally distant relationships with the representatives of progovernment and pro-opposition groups.

In Ergun’s case, these two challenges were overcome mainly through her professional identity, which facilitated the building of mutual trust. The academic nature of the interviews provided a certain acknowledgment and appreciation on the part of the informants. Ergun, who had quite a number of opportunities to observe journalists interviewing people in Azerbaijan, was aware of the striking differences between the answers given to journalists and to her by the informants. Although the locals and, particularly, the political elite preferred to impose some kind of power on the journalists by demon-strating their higher status, they usually treated Ergun as an equal and tried to be more helpful and frank by avoiding making populist statements as they perceived her as being involved in more “serious” work.

In Erdemir’s case, although he consistently introduced his professional identity in the same manner, his informants often rephrased what he was involved in when they introduced him and his work to other Alevis. Unlike Shahbazi’s (2004) experience in Iran, Erdemir’s informants did not have much of an opinion about the discipline of anthropology and focused on other components of his identity. Therefore, the following attributes were used in various contexts: researcher, writer, student, MA student, PhD stu-dent, intern, thesis writer, or book writer. Although these introductions were quite diverse and at times conflicting, they nevertheless defined his interest in the Alevis as a professional one and thereby helped legitimize his presence and inquiries.

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, most secular scholars and journalists—and their cameras and tape recorders—were welcomed even in Alevi congregational ceremonies because Alevis considered the work of scholars and journalists central to introducing the Alevis and their demands to the Sunni public in general. Alevis were, nevertheless, cautious and suspi-cious of outsiders who lacked professional reasons for showing up at events (e.g., Sunnis who visited Alevi organizations out of mere curiosity).




To sum up, despite the presence of different perceptions in Turkey and Azerbaijan concerning academics and journalists, our professional identities worked in similar ways to facilitate access and establish rapport.

ConclusionsIn this article, we juxtapose experiences of conducting fieldwork in settings that were neither unfamiliar nor fully familiar for us. On the one hand, Erdemir, a native anthropologist who had initially expected to be an outsider among a religious community, gradually became a partial insider. On the other hand, Ergun, a sociologist carrying out research in a foreign country, realized the great extent to which she was attributed insiderness by her infor-mants. When we compare these two cases, we see that researchers’ identities might have similar implications for researchers with partial insider status. This comparison, therefore, enables us to question the ways in which the field encounter affects and is affected by researcher identities.

The illustrations we present throughout this article highlight the fluid, non-static, permeable, and dialectic nature of insider and outsider identities in the field. Researchers’ constant negotiation with informants is inevitably a never-ending process. Even for so-called native ethnographers, becoming an insider is not straightforward. Characteristics attributed to researchers might not fully overlap with the researchers’ perceptions of their own ascribed and achieved identities. One can, therefore, find himself or herself in the position of an insider in a foreign land or an outsider in his or her own land. This is largely determined by context-dependent in-group/out-group or insider/outsider positions among the peoples studied. We therefore assert that the researcher, who is often suspended in a betwixt-and-between position, usually ends up with a fluid status that does not lead to either inclusion or exclusion.

In our cases, factors such as cultural, social, and linguistic affinities; ideol-ogy and political preferences; age, gender, marital status, and profession; and the interplay of these identities were significant in shaping our relations with our informants. Our ambiguous insider/outsider statuses enabled us to nego-tiate our identities at various levels. This negotiation included positioning ourselves in reference to commonalities and differences, fulfilling expecta-tions of natives, addressing concerns related to preserving neutrality, and dealing with conflicting political preferences. We conclude by reiterating that for the field researcher, there is neither a comfortable insider nor a com-fortable outsider position and that access to the field and reliable data can be achieved through a dialectical process involving constant negotiation. We therefore suggest that researchers treat fieldwork uncertainties around insider-outsider identities not as a challenge but as an opportunity to see and




experience the field in novel ways. These uncertainties, when conveyed to the readers as part of a self-reflexive narrative, have the potential to provide a richer and complex understanding of the field and its dynamics.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the following individuals for their criticisms and comments: Ozan Aşık, Sencer Ayata, Ayşe Gündüz-Hoşgör, Ayşe Güneş-Ayata, Robert Hayden, Ayşe Saktanber, Tuğba Tanyeri-Erdemir, and three anonymous referees.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.

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Bios

Ayça Ergun is an assistant professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology at Middle East Technical University. Her research interests include democratization, civil society, nation-state building, state-society relations, political elite in the South-ern Caucasus, and qualitative research methodology. She is the coeditor of Black Sea Politics: Political Culture and Civil Society in an Unstable Region (with Ayşe Ayata and Işıl Çelimli; 2005, I.B.Tauris). Her most recent publications are “Democracy and Gender Politics in Central Asian Republics” (coauthored with Ayşe Ayata) in Gender Politics in Post-Communist Eurasia (2009, Michigan University Press) and “Presi-dential Elections in Azerbaijan, October 2008” (2009, Electoral Studies).

Aykan Erdemir is an assistant professor of sociology in the Department of Sociol-ogy at Middle East Technical University. His research interests include faith-based collective action of Turkish and European Alevis, competitive sharing and museumi-fication of religious sites, work and remittance strategies and networks of Turkish immigrants, and internationalization of social sciences and humanities. His most recent publications are “Tradition and Modernity: Alevis’ Ambiguous Terms and Tur-key’s Ambivalent Subjects” (2005, Middle Eastern Studies); “Work Strategies among Turkish Immigrants in London: Differentiating Irregularity and Solidarity” (coau-thored with Ellie Vasta) in Irregular Migration, Informal Labour and Community: A Challenge for Europe (2007, Shaker Verlag); and “From Raindrops to Hailstones: Environments of Insecurity in the Case of Emigration from Turkey to London” (coau-thored with Besim Can Zırh) in Rethinking Global Migration: Practices, Policies, and Discourses in the European Neighbourhood (2008, KORA).



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