A Discussion on Fieldwork Experience: Negotiating Insider and Outsider Positions, Multiplex Identities and Gender

This article aims at discussing the fieldwork experience of a study on the collective memory of 12 September 1980 coup through focusing on insider and outsider positions and multiplex identities. The main argument of the article is that the insider and outsider positions are unfixable and that they are constantly negotiated and re-negotiated. This argument is illustrated through revealing how the insider and outsider positions are negotiated on basis of my multiplex identities – political, professional and gender identities. As these positions are also negoatiated depending on the situationalities, I also included a discussion on how the specific context in which the study was held was related to this negotiations. I argued that gender identity played a central role on the negotiation of each of my identities and the specific social context of the study, and thus, I paid particular attention to dealing gender identity through pursuing its relationality with other identities. I concluded that the respondents’ perceptions about my gender identity was highly influential on the negotiation of positions particularly through strategies such as domestication, “ascribing safety” and invisibilation.