White Bodies in Postcolonial Ethnographic Research

Lotte Holck, Sara Louise Muhr

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Abstract

This chapter presents an inquiry of the positions and interactions of white ethnographers and research participants in ethnographic fieldwork. Doing ethnographic research in a postcolonial setting conducted by white researchers, it is impossible to erase a white researcher body, which in itself is a marker of politics, privileges, and resources. This chapter draws on ethnographic experiences from a study of the Greenlandic Police Force conducted by two white (assumed Danish) researchers. As Greenland is a former Danish colony, the chapter describes and discusses the researchers’ ethnographic journey into the colonial past (and neocolonial present) of Greenland, considering how the researchers’ own bodies influenced – and were influenced by – the research process. Analyzing our ethnographic field data with this in mind, we explore how our whiteness (and thus assumed “Danishness”) influences and affects relations between researchers and participants, and hence, the data and insights generated from this research.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
TitelThe Routledge Companion to Organizational Diversity Research Methods
RedaktørerSine Nørholm Just, Annette Risberg, Florence Villesèche
Antal sider14
UdgivelsesstedNew York
ForlagRoutledge
Publikationsdato2021
Sider36-49
Kapitel4
ISBN (Trykt)9780367211486
ISBN (Elektronisk)9780429265716, 9780429556234
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2021

Bibliografisk note

Published online: 14 October 2020

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