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Full Description
This edited volume presents thirteen contributions that reflect upon the practical, ethical, theoretical and methodological challenges that researchers face when conducting fieldwork in settings that are characterized with deteriorating security situations, increasing state control and conflicting inter-ethnic relations. More precisely, they shed light to the intricacies of conducting fieldwork on highly politicized and sensitive topics in the region of Kurdistan in Iraq, Syria and Turkey as well as among Kurdish diaspora members in Europe.
This volume is multidisciplinary in its focus and approach. It includes contributions from scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds, ranging from sociology and political science to social psychology and anthropology. The complexity of security situations, and the atmospheres of distrust and suspicion have led the contributors to be creative and to adapt their research methods in ways that at times transcend disciplinary boundaries and conventions. Relatedly, the contributions also open the often-considered Pandora's box of discussing the failures in what is often a "messy" research field, and how to adopt one's methods to rapidly changing political circumstances. This necessitates greater reflexivity in existing power relations of the surrounding context and how those affect not only the interaction situations between the researcher and the participants, but also raise questions for the overall research process, concerning namely social justice, representation and knowledge production. The contributions unravel this by unpacking positionalities beyond ethnicities, discussing how gendered and other positionalities are constructed in fieldwork interactions and by illustrating how the surrounding structures of power and dominance are present in every-day fieldwork.
What differentiates this book from the existing literature is that it is the first academic endeavor that solely focuses on methodological reflections aimed to the field of Kurdish Studies. It offers a comprehensive and multidisciplinary account of scholars' fieldwork experiences in the Kurdish regions and as such, it is also of value to scholars conducting or about to conduct fieldwork in conflict regions elsewhere.
Contents
Ch. 1: Critical Ethnography: Emancipatory Knowledge And Alternative Dialogues
Vera Eccarius-Kelly
Ch. 2: Living Structures: Methodological Considerations On People And Place
Joost Jongerden
Ch. 3: Online-Offline Research On Diasporic Identities: Methodological Benefits, Challenges and Critical Insights
Jowan Mahmod
Ch. 4: Tracing Global History Through The Kurds In The Imperial And National Archives And Beyond
Marc Sinan Winrow
Ch. 5: Troubled Terrain: Lines of Allegiance and Political Belonging in Northern Kurdistan
Marlene Schäfers
Ch. 6: Working Upon the Communities under the Political Domination: Subaltern Kurds in Turkey
Polat Alpman
Ch. 7: Feeling Solidarity in An Estranged City: Ethnography In The Post-War Diyarbakır Under Surveillance
Demet Arpacik
Ch. 8: Outsiders Twice Over in Kurdistan
Francis O'Connor And Semih Celik
Ch. 9: The Omnipresent Absentee? Challenges In Researching The Kurdistan Workers' Party In Europe And Turkey
Marlies Casier
Ch. 10: "She's Turkish but Good": Researching On Kurdish Internal Displacement As A 'Turkish' Female Researcher
Yesim Mutlu
Ch. 11: Straddling The Insider-Outsider Divide: Challenges Of Turkish Identity As An Outsider Researcher In The Kurdish Context
Yasemin Gulsum Acar And Ozden Melis Ulug
Ch. 12: Beyond The Insider-Outsider Dichotomy: Conducting Ethnographic Fieldwork As A Kurdish Returnee In Iraqi Kurdistan
Lana Askari
Ch. 13: Embedded Research and Political Violence: Kurdish Studies In Conflict Areas
Thomas Schmidinger
Conclusion: Reflections on Research: Challenges And Opportunities
Begum Zorlu and Yasin Duman
