Paper short abstract:

This paper explores inequalities in knowledge production by focusing on insider/outsider dynamics when doing research in Sub-Saharan Africa. It aims to contribute to research practices that foster reciprocity while being sensitive neither to reproduce nor silence rooted inequalities and asymmetries.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores inequalities in knowledge production by focusing on insider/outsider dynamics when doing ethnography in organisations in Sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on our experiences as management researchers working with African organisations and on face-to-face interviews with insider and outsider researchers, we explore issues around researchers' identities, focusing especially on divergences and intersections with the identities of the research participants.

Our contribution builds on three key assumptions. Firstly, we understand the insider/outsider status as both precarious and shifting according to the various encounters we make along the research process. Secondly, we acknowledge that we all have multiple intersecting identities and positionalities, including multiple outsider and insider status. However, and thirdly, we also believe that constructions such as race/ethnicity/blackness/whiteness significantly contribute to the shaping of our insider/outsider status, especially when we do research in the field of international development and more specifically in sub-Saharan Africa.

Drawing on these assumptions, we aim to engage with experiences and reflections of 'insider' and 'outsider' researchers so to highlight differences, unpack intersections and builds conceptual and practice-based bridges. In this sense, this paper aims to enlighten how researchers have dealt with these dilemmas so to contribute to advance our understandings of research practices that foster reciprocity and cooperation while being sensitive neither to reproduce nor silence rooted inequalities and asymmetries.