6
Insider, Outsider, or Exotic Other? Identity,
Performance, Reflexivity, and Postcritical
Ethnography
Paula Groves
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
In the tradition of anthropology, and in particular, ethnography, the researcher
usually engulfs him or herself into the "field" to study some Other that is far
removed from the researcher's own identity. Under this premise, the researcher
makes the strange familiar by crossing cultural boundaries in an effort to understand the ways of being and knowing of another culture. Many anthropologists
have used performance, and the study of rituals, ceremonies, stories, and other
expressive events as a window to understanding the exotic. Public performances
can open up spaces for interaction, where the field researcher tries to understand
the native's point of view through participant observation, and then makes
meaning of the events through an interpretive narrative (Geertz, 1972).
Because the "exotic other" is usually the subject of study in traditional
ethnography, studying one's own can become a site of conflict. Researchers who
study their own have been suspect of deviating from the research project's
purpose—to describe and understand culture—because of the shared assumptions
and biases that the researchers carry by the nature of their "sameness" to their
research participants.
Although traditional ethnography recognizes the impossibility of biasedfree research, the genre operates under the belief that the role of self-reflection is
to recognize bias, but those biases can and should be repressed
103
104 Groves
(Marcus, 1998; Thomas, 1993). In written texts, this notion has translated such
that the emotions, reflections, and positionality of the researcher are rarely
revealed, and if presented, are often placed in the appendix or as a side note to the
research project. Such reflections are viewed as secondary and as a sidebar to the
real project of studying the other.
The dissatisfaction with the requirement to repress the researcher's visceral
emotions, identities, and positionality has led to the growth of critical
ethnography, as researchers recognize the irony of corporeal repression in a paradigm of embodied research. The increasingly diversified pool of qualitative
researchers coupled with the expansion of critical theory has altered some of the
traditional taboos associated with studying one's own culture. In fact, under
critical ethnography, the exploration of the relationship between the researcher
and the researched is looked on as a powerful way to inspire a research design
(Marcus, 1998).
The growth and creation of ethnic and women's studies departments in
colleges and universities were based on these same premises—that the study of
and advocacy for the oppressed should come from the oppressed themselves
(Alcoff, 1991). Not only could studying one's own inspire powerful research
designs, but in a critical paradigm it is desired, as it can potentially escape some
of the traps of "exoticizing the other" that is frequently found in conventional
ethnography.
Thomas (1993) explained that "critical ethnography is conventional
ethnography with a political purpose" (p. 4). Critical ethnography problematizes
comfortable ways of viewing the world by critiquing issues of power and
illustrating how everyday lives are oppressed by the ills of the larger social
structure. Racism, patriarchy, and class discrimination are common themes as
researchers aim to place the local contexts of people's lived experiences within the
larger context of institutional and social structures.
If critical ethnography is about anything, it is about freedom from social repression
and a vision of a better society. Research helps identify what oppresses and how it
can be altered. It requires that we understand our subjects, our culture, and above all
ourselves as a way of dispelling myths and misconceptions that format social
structures and behaviors. (Thomas, 1993, p.71)
The move from a traditional or "conventional" ethnography to a critical
ethnography inscribes the notion that the research should serve some political
purpose to foster a better and more equitable society. Critical ethnography critiques
traditional ethnography for reproducing and supporting some of the basic tenets of
colonialism through its fascination with the other as some subject of discovery:
Identity Performance, Reflexivity, & Postcritical Ethnography 105
Critical ethnography aims to counter the colonialistic and voyeuristic tendencies
of traditional ethnography by beginning research with conscious political
intentions of letting practice inform theory and theory inform practice, in order
that the powerless can be empowered and emancipated. (Hytten, 1998)
With the core principal of critical ethnography being emancipation for the
oppressed and powerless, critical ethnographers have recently come to realize a
number of problems and complexities associated with the researcher's role in the
project. One of the problems of critical ethnography is the need to connect the lived
experiences of the researched to the larger political structure. In a paradigm where
local contexts extend into macro-analyses, the written narrative often assumes that the
researcher "knows" or understands the complex social situation better than the
participants themselves do. In an effort to steer clear of the trap of privileging the
researcher's academic voice, critical ethnography can also run the risk of an
"overprivileging" of the native—representing the voice of the oppressed as gallant
through an overly heroic portrayal (Murillo, 1999). Although critical ethnography has
always been premised on political intentions, it is questionable whether or not the
researched are actually emancipated by the researcher's theories and agendas (Jordan
& Yeomans, 1995).
Representation has always been an issue of contention within traditional and
critical ethnographic genres. The representation of voice in written texts has been
widely critiqued as researchers search for fair, balanced, and ethical ways to present
data. Although traditional ethnography removes the researcher from the narrative, to
"give voice" to the other, this plan is criticized for reinforcing and unwittingly
reproducing the power dynamic of the privileged scholar granting the unprivileged
native the temporary power to speak. Critical ethnography that focuses in on the
researcher's positionality and experience, however, runs the risk of being narcissistic,
conflating the voice of the people marginalized with the critic's rhetoric of political
empowerment. As ethnographers struggle to find a balance in representation, the
power dynamics posed between the researcher and the researched continues to be at
the heart of the problem (McCadden, Dempsey, & Adkins, 1999).
The move from critical ethnography to postcritical ethnography is an attempt
to reconcile some of the core problems and traps found in the other two ethnographic
genres. Postcritical ethnography is critical ethnography that prob-lematizes the
relationship between researcher and researched through critical reflexivity, to a
socially transformative end. Postcritical ethnography is not just about reflecting on
the self and recognizing the complexity of occupying multiple spaces and identities in
a fluid and chaotic postmodern moment. It is also about challenging the critical
research paradigm and critiquing the assumptions and consequences associated with
such research (McCadden et al., 1999; Murillo, 1999).
106 Groves
With the complexities and dilemmas inherent in social science research,
postcritical ethnography faces a number of challenges to achieve macro-level
institutional changes as well as the emancipatory goals of empowering the powerless.
Like most evolving genres, there is no blueprint or handbook on how to do
postcritical ethnography. Within the ever-growing circle of colleagues who are
engaging in postcritical working groups, there have been numerous different ideas,
critiques, and proposed explanations as to what post-critical research is and how a
post-critical narrative would look.
Some have suggested that post-critical ethnographic research should be
collaborative, dialogic, and educative (Hytten, 1998; Murillo, 1999). Oppressed
groups have constantly been the casualties of research that has been forced upon them
by outside institutional forces where the gains for "the people" have been
questionable. A more grassroots research design that is collaborative, dialogic, and
based on the sociopolitical changes desired by and led by the "natives" could
potentially alter some of the power issues inherent in ethnography (Jennings, 1999).
This calls for a change in the way in which we think of research projects as involving
a researcher and the researched. All are participants in a dialogic collaborative effort
where everyone is engaged in a learning process.
Understanding ethnographic praxis as performance is one way of changing
the ways in which we think about the relationship between researcher and researched.
Although most ethnographic research is conducted in the participant's "natural
setting," fieldwork is contingent on constructed and unnatural relationships, which
Conquergood (1986) contended are performances between ethnographer and native
consultants. In other words, the "researcher" and the "researched" are both engaged in
the production and performance of a public transcript through their constructed
relationship, blurring the boundary between subject and object. Conquergood
explained the power of a performative view:
Positivist claims have the moral consequence of fixing people in subject-object
categories in an alignment of power relations where the fieldworker observes from a
privileged distance the Other who becomes the field of study. The performative view
brings ethnographer and native together as co-actors, mutually engaged collaborators in
a fragile fiction. There is an interdependence between Self and Other in the
performative view—both are vulnerable. Instead of the researcher presented as detached
and controlling the performative view admits the fragile situation of the fieldworker.
Geertz talks about the "humbling" nature of fieldwork experience and says that one of
the "benefits" of fieldwork research "is that it teaches you how it feels to be thought of
as a fool and used as an object and how to endure it." (pp. 61-62)
A performative conception of ethnography recognizes the delicate public
relationship between the fieldworker and native, and understands performance not
just as theatrics, but also as the interplay of everyday life. Postcritical
Identity Performance, Reflexivity, & Postcritical Ethnography 107
ethnography can be truly dialogic, collaborative, and educative once it is placed
outside of an epistemology that dichotomizes the subject-object, researcherresearched relationship. Both are co-actors in a "social drama," constructing a
"fiction" or "public transcript" that has real consequences for all.
Even under alternative epistemologies, the representational product of postcritical
research can once again become a problematic site for the "researcher." Although the
project itself is the product of collaboration and dialogue, the product should also be
representational of the learning process entailed in the project. The researcher should not
automatically be granted the authority or legitimization to represent the project through
written text. The product, be it a written narrative, a written text, or a performance,
should be collaborative and produced by all of the participants or actors. The problems of
speaking for or speaking about others that critical researchers struggle with can be
eschewed by letting people speak for themselves through various mediums (Alcoff,
1991).
STUDYING YOUR OWN: INSIDER OR OUTSIDER?
The core of critical and postcritical ethnography lies in the attempt to understand
power relations from multiple perspectives. For the researcher who finds him or
herself betwixt and between multiple spaces of domination and subordination, the
research project can become very complex and problematic. Researchers must
question who ultimately will benefit from the project; how the research could
possibly be interpreted and used when in the hands of the dominant; as well as their
own place in the power dynamic of the way the society is organized (Villenas, 1996)
In the case where researchers find themselves "studying" in their own
communities, where they are on one hand the researcher, and on the other hand the
researched, the learning process usually begins with questions of boundary crossings.
What identity do we perform at any given moment—that of the researcher or that of
the researched? What happens when both identities are performed simultaneously and
are in dialogue? Can we really be insiders once we have aligned ourselves with
academic institutions?
As Hytten (1998) noted, most critical ethnographers are highly educated,
socially privileged, and in written texts, their macro-analyses are legitimated and
privileged over the local knowledge of the natives. Even if the researcher selfidentifies as being a part of the community of the local natives, alliances with the
academy creates power positions of privilege over the research participants.
As a result of this privilege, the insider-outsider question becomes very
complex. For researchers who struggle to discern their place along the insideroutsider continuum, it is helpful to understand that the continuum is not rigid. In fact,
we may occupy various spaces and degrees of "insiderness" and
108 Groves
"outsiderness" depending on who we are speaking with, the topic of the discussion, who
is present during the discussion, and a whole host of other contextual factors. When we
"study our own," we are constantly crossing fluid boundaries and renegotiating our
multiple identities (Villenas, 1996).
For the bicultural or biracial researcher, the boundary crossings and identity
negotiations can become very complicated. A few bicultural researchers have noted that
they find themselves to fall within an "outsider within" status and have written about the
impact it has had on their field experiences (Bolak, 1997). For many, these field
experiences have led to a greater understanding of the self and the exploration of identity
politics. As the pool of qualitative researchers as well as the communities with which we
engage become more diverse, the boundaries between insider and outsider status will
continue to blur.
For me, a bicultural and biracial woman of color, the insider-outsider dilemma is
always a site of conflict as I navigate through the field and engage in research projects.
This chapter seeks to problematize the insider-outsider predicament as I reflect on my
field experiences in a rural North Carolina elementary school. In particular, I attempt to
probe key questions in qualitative research and postcritical ethnography as I explore the
impact my perceived race and identity has had on the project, as well as my own identity
performances (conscious and subconscious) that helped shape those perceptions of me.
Although conventional and some critical ethnography looks to ritualistic performances of
the other as a gateway to understanding culture, I turn the critical eye on to myself, as I
try to understand my cultural performances and the implications it has on my research.
This is not a postcritical narrative, but rather a post-critical examination of key questions
and issues that I as a researcher need to contend with as I engage in postcritical writings.
Postcritical narratives are only now being envisioned. Before attempting to produce a
postcritical narrative, it is important that I engage in self-discovery and critical reflexivity
such that I have a strong sense of the consequences of my multiple roles, identities, and
positions as I interact with others while in the field.
REFLEXIVITY, PERFORMANCE AND RENEGOTIATING IDENTITY
As previously mentioned, critical self-reflexivity is an essential component of critical and
postcritical research. We must reflect on how our involvement as ethnogra-phers affects
our data collection, our interpretations, and our representation of the data through some
product. We generally try to think about how our own biases, subconscious or otherwise,
might have affected our research. We try to think about instances where our interpretive
lenses may have been narrowed, where we may have missed something key to the "full"
story. We try to think about how our final product would look differently if we were to
re-do the project (Thomas, 1993).
Identity Performance, Reflexivity, & Postcritical Ethnography 109
Only recently have we begun to ask questions that probe how our project
would look differently if someone from a different race or ethnic background
collected the data and analyzed it. How does insider-outsider status affect the
outcome of the project? What are the implications when the researcher
continuously crosses borders and occupies multiple spaces on the insider-outsider
continuum? What happens when the ethnographer is perceived to belong to
different racial categories by different participants? These are questions that I
sought to answer as I critically examined my involvement in an ethnographic
project.
In a method of inquiry in which the researcher interacts and develops
relationships with the participants, it is often difficult to separate the research from
the research process. In fact, the researcher is a part of the research process, and we,
therefore, must be aware of how we influence participants and how the participants
influence us (Thomas, 1993). Our presence in a setting inevitably has implications
and consequences for what takes place then and subsequently (Emerson, Fretz, &
Shaw, 1995). Alcoff(1991) eloquently stated this relationship:
We cannot neatly separate off our mediating praxis that interprets and constructs our experiences from the praxis of others. We are collectively caught
in an intricate, delicate web in which each action I take, discursive or
otherwise, pulls on, breaks off or maintains the tension in many strands of a
web in which others find themselves moving also. (p. 21)
In other words, everything we do and say affects others, and we must be
accountable for those consequences, unanticipated or otherwise. Reinharz (1997)
contended that ethnographers bring a self and also create a self in the field; the
created self being the product of the interactions, norms, and social setting of the
informants on the selves the researcher brings to the field. I agree with this notion,
but also contend that we create multiple selves while in the field; hybrid identities
that are a result of our multiple identities interacting with our participants. It is the
performance of our created selves that ultimately impacts our studies.
The growth of cultural studies as a discipline, and the melding of the social
sciences, has brought an increased attention to issues of performance in qualitative
research. Although notions of performance frequently make reference to theatricality
as a prolific metaphor for the social dimensions of cultural production, it also
embodies a much wider range of human behaviors (Roach, 1995). For the researcher,
such behaviors may include what de Certeau (1984) called "the practice of everyday
life," in which the role of the observer expands into that of participant. Although
qualitative researchers often have their eyes open to the possible performance of the
"public transcript" of their participants, what they often take for granted is how their
own performances affect the performances of those around them (Scott, 1990).
110 Groves
It was through my ethnographic experiences in rural North Carolina that many of
these critical questions about race, identity, and ethnography unfolded as I attempted to
make sense of my performances and subsequent positions while in the field. As a part of
an ongoing evaluation of an arts-based school reform effort, I visited a predominantly
African-American elementary school regularly over the course of 4 years. My task was to
conduct interviews, observe classrooms and interactions in the school, and record the
process of change in the school as they "reformed." I visited the schools to "see all, leam
all, and tell all" (Noblit & Engel, 1991).
As a first-year graduate student and someone new to the South, I wasn't sure
what my presence in the schools would mean. Being racially mixed (African American
and Japanese), evaluating a program in a predominantly African-American school, I
realized that I occupied a number of spaces, that I possessed a multitude of identities, and
thus had to constantly renegotiate my performative selves while in the field. Where
would I fall on the insider-outsider continuum in a highly race-coded local community?
Would my physical racial ambiguity place me in a space outside of the Black-White
binary of the south, making me the exoticized other or a complete outsider? How would
my perceived racial identity affect my interactions with the participants and my data
collection?
By all accounts of self-identity—the code noir (one drop rule), familial ties, and
community ties—I consider myself to be an African American. Self-identity and imposed
or perceived identity in my case, however, are often very different. The "eyeball test," of
deciphering my ethnic heritage often leads to confusion for most. My "high yellow" skin
tone, hair texture, and nose are often said to be my performatives of blackness, but the
slant in my eyes and the bone structure of my face are clearly markers of an Asian
background. Depending on my location, I am often perceived as being Hawaiian,
Samoan, Puerto Rican, Latino, or some exotic other.
When in the field, the question becomes whether I am an exotic other, just Black,
or something else. Am I always what I perceive myself to be, or does what others
perceive me to be have more of a bearing on the relationships that I build in the field?
How do my identity performances impact the perception others have of me in terms of
my racial identity? Does my racial identity, real and perceived, matter in the context of
ethnographic research? How is the self that I create (is created for me) a reflection or
mirror of the racial politics of the society in which I am studying? These questions were
key as I scrutinized the racial politics of my identity and the performances of my
everyday life.
Without a doubt, race has always been, and continues to be an important factor in
the way people relate to each other in U.S. society. Because this project was located in
rural North Carolina, where local politics have been racially divided since slavery, racial
identity mattered very much.
The school, with a predominantly African-American student population and
teaching staff, was assigned its first White principal with the inception of a countywide
restructuring effort. The small, poor school of about 250 students was
Identity Performance, Reflexivity, & Postcritical Ethnography 111
piloting a 5-year arts-based reform program in an effort to increase student
achievement. Schools that agreed to participate in the pilot consented to an ongoing
evaluation of their implementation to document their story of reform.
Always visiting the school as a part of a two-person team, it became apparent
very quickly that I was granted entrance into talking with participants about the delicate
racial politics of the community when my research partner was not. When conducting
interviews together, we found that we were often given the broad "public transcript" that
the teachers, principal, and staff felt that "university evaluators" would like to hear. They
would paint very positive pictures of their reform efforts, choosing to air their dirty
laundry to me only in private.
To capture the "real" story of reform, we decided to conduct interviews
individually and later compare notes. When comparing notes, it became apparent that
issues of race were rarely mentioned in my partner's interviews, whereas they were
usually explicitly articulated in mine. When we walked through the hallways of the
school together, some of the school staff would choose to engage only in "small talk,"
and later stop me as I wandered alone to inform me of any "new" news. On one occasion,
the custodian of the school apologized to me for cutting one of our conversations short
because he didn't want to say anything to me "in front of that White lady" because she
"seemed to be trying to figure out what we were talking about."
These experiences sparked a number of critical questions for us as we began
analyzing our data. Although the educational issues the school faced and the general
story of reform was nearly the same in the fieldnotes that we collected individually, the
openness and willingness to talk about racial politics varied dramatically. My research
partner, a southern White woman, was very well liked in the school by all participants,
but it was clear that there were specific boundaries that she would never be able to cross,
even with the White participants. What was interesting was that the participants in the
school, both Black and White, seemed relatively comfortable talking with me about the
racial problems in their community.
Most of the African-American participants in the school had no qualms asking
me about my racial background, and often used my mixed-race heritage as a springboard
to talk about the racial issues of their local community. My non-southern background
and "exotic" features usually placed me in the common outsider within status that most
biracial researchers experience. With my Black self-identity disclosed, most of the
African-American participants seemed fairly comfortable disclosing the stormy race
relations of the community and school. In fact, my position on the insider-outsider
continuum seemed to shift further to the left (insider) when I interviewed nonsoutherners who worked in the school. Although this shift may also be due in part to the
fact that the non-southerners also share somewhat of an "outsider" status in the school, it
is interesting to note that the degree of "blackness" that I perceived to carry varied by the
region of origin of the participant. The African-American faculty that lived for some
time in the North, and were customarily exposed to the Black
112 Groves
Diaspora, tended to view me as being "just Black." The native African-American faculty,
on the other hand, tended to view me as someone who "had some Black blood," but was
not a true insider. In the case of my relationships with the Black participants in the
school, geography seemed to be key to hybridity and perceptions of my racial identity,
placing me in different positions along the continuum.
Although the ease of conversation that the African-American staff had with me
was expected, I did not expect some of the White participants to speak with similar ease,
particularly when they did not seem to want to discuss these issues with my White
research partner. The White participants never asked me my racial identity, so I have no
way of knowing exactly how many of them chose to categorize me. What was apparent,
however, was that they saw me as a "safe" person to talk with about the Black and White
race relations of their school and community. As the minority, and "racial outsiders" of
the predominantly Black school, perhaps my "outsiderness" provided them a space of
comfort such that they, like the African-American "outsiders," granted me an "insider
within outsider" status. Perhaps my relatively perceived "safeness" was based on my
physical appearance of not fitting into the Black-White binary of their racial economy.
Where many White southerners feel uncomfortable talking about race, even "among their
own," for fear of being labeled racist, I seemed to provide them a socially acceptable
venue to talk about race relations because it was perceived that I was a complete outsider
based on my exotic features. Viewing me as an exotic other, someone not necessarily
positioned against them in the racial politics of their world, they could freely talk with me
about African American individuals that they thought were racist and adversely dividing
the community.
In the same location (the school), I was perceived to belong to different racial
categories as well to as occupy different spaces on the insider-outsider continuum by the
local participants. Although the responses I experienced from the participants are most
likely due to a number of factors—the background of the participant, personality, comfort
with strangers—I must also question my own identity performances that may have helped
shape those different perceptions of me. Did I perform or act differently with different
participants? The honest and logical answer is probably "yes." Depending on my location
and with whom I am interacting, I consciously and subconsciously play up certain
identities. In the university setting, I tend to play up my student identity, at a baby shower
I play up my female identity; at an academic conference I may perform my
intellectual/academic identity. In the performance of everyday life, I am constantly
playing up and down certain aspects of my identity, renegotiating my position dependent
on my surroundings and social context.
As I critically reflect on my identity performances, it seems reasonable to believe
that on some conscious and subconscious level, I played up my Black performatives with
the African-American participants in the school. Be it through speech pattern,
mannerisms, or topics of discussions, I probably per-
Identity Performance, Reflexivity, & Postcritical Ethnography 113
formed a "Black essence" to create a more comfortable space for us to engage in
dialogue. With my racial identity disclosed early through their inquiries, my
positionality was hardly ever in question.
With the White participants, however, where my racial identity was never
explicitly discussed, I tended to perform a more "academic/university" identity to
create a similar space of comfort to dialogue. Was I using my racial ambiguity to
"act White" and "pass" for some exotic other? Was I hiding behind academia,
masking my most consequential identity under the guise of "legitimate
researcher"?
Historically, passing has been a site of conflict and mixed race people have
passed for a variety of reasons—mainly to take advantage of economic
opportunities during the age of Jim Crow and to escape the hardships of being
Black in an unfair race-coded society (Funderburg, 1994). In this post-Jim Crow
society, where institutional race-based discrimination is now covert, instances of
intentional racial passing have lessened. Ginsberg (1996) powerfully defined
passing by saying:
passing is about identities: their creation or imposition, their adoption or
rejection, their accompanying rewards or penalties. Passing is also about the
boundaries established between identity categories and about the individual and
cultural anxieties induced by boundary crossing. Finally, passing is about
specularity: the visible and the invisible, the seen and the unseen, (p. 2)
Based on the "seen and unseen," my capacity to "pass" and "not pass"
resulted in my precarious positions on the insider-outsider continuum, as others
continued to perceive me differently. The bicultural researcher must be reflexive
about the fact that others will impose racialized and status categories that have
real consequences. My ability to navigate through the field and construct multiple
fictions with various participants was largely dependent on my own cultural performances interacting with the performances of my co-actors or participants.
POSTCRITICAL AND REFLEXIVE
Hertz (1997) described reflexivity as having an ongoing conversation about
experience while simultaneously living in the moment. Through this self-dialogue, critical ethnographers often look to their own lives in the process of trying
to create meaning and make sense of what is seen and heard in the field (Hertz,
1997; Manning, 1967). Probyn (1993) posited that self-reflexivity is both a metatheoretical reflection on the writing of texts as well as a way to name the
experiential moment of interacting with those in the field. It is not a mere
afterthought or reflection, but a process.
114 Groves
Critical ethnographers have been discussing self-reflexivity within the
context of research for some time. Being self-reflective, however, is not necessarily a triumphant move. Although self-reflection is important, and we must ask
ourselves critical questions about our involvement in the research setting, our
methods, and our analysis, postcritical ethnography pushes us to the next level of
reflexivity. We must critically examine our assumptions and political worldviews,
understanding that our identities cause us to write and speak from a specific place
and culture that is always positioned (Hall, 1990). But even here, postcritical
ethnography risks privileging the self-reflexive nature of the researcher, which
again bestows the reproductive dangers of critical ethnography—the assumption
that the researcher knows all.
For ethnographers who study in their own communities, the ontological
dilemmas of ethnographic research are even more intense. As we embark in
academia, how much of an "insider" are we really in relation to our community of
origin? What are the implications of our "outsider" status of being associated with
the academy? For me, the ethnographic irony is that I was treated as an "insider"
only by Blacks and Whites who occupied an "outsider" position. Engaging in
what you perceive to be "your own" community does not necessarily mean that
others share the perception that you are "one of theirs," or an insider.
As we engage in postcritical narratives, we must constantly problematize
some of the issues and dilemmas that critical ethnographer's confront. Working
toward emancipatory goals and social justice, it is anticipated that our projects
will have some sociopolitical impact on our world. With such high goals and good
intentions, it is easy to fall into some of the same "traps of reproduction" that
conventional and critical ethnographers face. We must continue to ask critical
questions that problematize our ways of thinking, our ways of knowing, our
relationship to the project, and our race and status. Just as we, as researchers, are
part and parcel of the research project, our participants dictate what we are trusted
and allowed to know. We are all performing in a social drama, but we do not
always share the same script.