“At-home ethnography”: Insider, outsider and social relations in rural drinking water management in Chile

Introduction

My personal experiences while conducting fieldwork in Chile – where I was born and raised – have drawn me to write a contribution to this special issue on the difference between conducting ethnography “at-home” and “abroad”. My objective is not to provide a list of recommendations but to promote reflection about conducting ethnography, especially in relation to the “bipolar construction of insider/outsider” (Naples, 2003, p. 373), which ignores the interactive processes that construct what are more fluid social locations.

I discuss Alvesson’s idea of “at-home ethnography” (Alvesson, 2009, p. 160) by using institutional ethnography (IE) as a method of inquiry and by drawing on my own shifting positions while in Chile. My experience and findings problematise Alvesson’s taken-for-granted notion about the apparent ability of third world country, or insider ethnographers, to gain natural access to the field just because they share the same national culture as the participants (Alvesson, 2009). I argue things might be more complicated than that, especially for returning researchers like myself. Moreover, when conducting an IE, the researcher, whether an insider or an outsider, needs to go beyond the local setting to look at how the institution is organised. Alvesson’s notion of “at-home ethnography” falls short when using this method.

Furthermore, while conducting fieldwork, I realised much ethnographic research documented the experiences of scholars from western countries while “abroad”. Only a few drew critically upon the experiences of those who return to their “non-western” countries to do empirical research. I realised my experience is underrepresented in the literature on qualitative research methods and this work contributes towards addressing that bias.

This paper is structured as follows: First, I briefly describe the discussions surrounding the insider/outsider debate to then relate them to Alvesson’s ideas on “at-home ethnography” (Ybema et al., 2009). Second, I explain the context of my research and the main assumptions of IE as a method of inquiry. Third, I explore how knowledge production unfolded during my experiences in Chile and how working within an IE helped me make sense of my constant fluid positionality while at home. I conclude by arguing returnees are in a unique position to overcome insider/outsider binaries.

Insider, outsider and “at-home ethnography”

The insider/outsider debate in sociological and ethnographic research has a long...