Description
The ethnographic turn has opened a range of new epistemological, ontological, and methodological insights into the field of International Relations (IR). By challenging state-centric top-down approaches and generating valuable bottom-up insights, ethnography helps to understand the workings and impact of complex global politics beginning from the local/regional. Self-reflexivity and discussions on insider/outsider positionalities are key elements of ethnographic work. This article argues for a more nuanced understanding of researchers’ multiple and overlapping identities and thus questions the strict categorization of researchers as either insiders or outsiders of the regions and groups studied. Drawing on the author’s own experience as a second-generation female Kurdish immigrant from Europe, who conducted fieldwork in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, this paper highlights the importance of including self-reflexivity as a research practice. This study reflects on the challenges and opportunities researchers, who embody a bridge of “Global South”/“Global North” positionalities, face. Among the reflections are feelings of guilt, gratitude, and discussions of power relations, privilege, and extractivism.
