*CFP* “REFLECTION ON RESEARCH EXPERIENCE AMONG UNMARKED GROUPS”, 8TH ETNOGRAPHY AND QUALITATIVE RESEARCH CONFERENCE

8th Etnography and Qualitative Research Conference

Reflection on Research Experience Among Unmarked Groups

3-6 de Junio de 2020

University of Bergamo, Italy

Ethnography has been historically linked with the colonial relationship between Europe and their ex-colonies and with other asymmetries. For social anthropology, for example, fieldwork has consisted for a long time in the study of “exotic cultures” in non-European societies, and for sociology in the research of “marginal groups” in modern societies.

Fieldwork research has an a priori: the researcher or participant observer belongs to a “we” group (civilized and Westerns) and the informant or participant observed, belongs to a “they” group (primitive and non-Western). This tendency is today mainly maintained. Researches about “unmarked” groups (white, wealthy and heterosexual people, for example) are scarce. Although the “unmarked” comprises the vast majority of social life, the “marked” commands a disproportionate share ofattention from social scientists currently doing ethnography studies.

Regretfully, researches subverting these historical hierarchical relationships are still rare. Several methodological obstacles (How to get access to people in order to study them? Who gives access and on what terms? Who can and who does study whom? And, under what conditions and for which objectives who studies who?) and epistemological consequences (since the marked already draws more attention within the global culture, social scientists contribute to re-mark marked groups, and to reproduce common-sense images of the social reality) are associated with this marginality.

Furthermore, not only those kind of studies are little common, but also personal reflections on research experiences. This panel aims at fulfilling this theoretical vacuum by gathering researchers working on “inverted” fieldworks. It invites social scientists conducting ethnographic fieldwork about “unmarked” groups to send a proposal. Theoretical and methodological reflections are welcomed as well as reflections on how asymmetrical relationships play in fieldwork relationships (reflexivity).

Proposals are welcome from different research fields such as anthropology, sociology, history, Latin-American studies, political studies, communication (visual anthropology, visual ethnographies, documentary, etc).

Papers are invited on topics related, but not limited, to:

• Methodological, theoretical, and practical (access to fieldwork) challenges that researchers face when they study “unmarked” groups;
• How fieldwork experiences contribute to thinking epistemological conditions of the production of knowledge;
• Significant elements for the researcher’s identity to defined respectability: mainstream social values, race, gender, social interests;
• How a phenomenon becomes an ethnographically studiedly and legitimately subject of research;
• Under what historical, social and cultural conditions a social segment deserve ethnographic research;
• How methods can be used not only to debunk hierarchical research relationships but also to produce new scientific insights with greater validity.

Submission deadline: January 10, 2019

How to Submit

To submit your proposal please send an e-mail to the convenor/s of the session and to the conference committee (erq.conference@unibg.it), mentioning the title of the chosen session in the email subject. 

Please send:

• The title of your talk and an abstract of maximum 1000 words (.doc, .docx, .odt, .txt, .rtf);
• Your contact details (full name, e-mail, post address and affiliation) and those of your co-author/s, if any;
• If you like (we would like!), a short video talk (2 min. max.), not necessarily a piece of what your proposed talk would be, but a sort of teaser trailer for it, and a piece of you too (by sending the video, you thereby allow the organizing committee to upload the video at its discretion, in full or cut form, on the youtube channel of Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa)

Abstracts (and video talks) must be submitted in English. The official languages of the conference, however, are Italian, English, and French; for each session, languages will be used depending on the participants composition.

Proposal must be submitted by January 10, 2020.

Acceptance of proposals will be notified by March 9, 2020.

Contributors must register by April 13, 2020 to be included in the program.