Paper short abstract:

This presentation will discuss the conflicts, primarily surrounding positionality, experienced by one foreign female anthropologist in Northern Thailand during a year-long research project studying men who purchase sex work.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation will discuss the conflicts, primarily surrounding positionality, experienced by one foreign female anthropologist in Northern Thailand during a year-long research project studying men who purchase sex work. During the course of data collection, which included hundreds of participant observations at locations where Thai heterosexual men purchase sex, my positionality as a foreign female researcher both strengthened and complicated relationships with male and female informants in many ways. This presentation will discuss conducting participant observations as an outsider visiting the world of massage parlours and karaoke bars, and it will question how to do no harm in communities where some sex workers don't want researchers telling their stories. Through discussing a series of events with one organized group of female sex workers who were hesitant to speak to researchers, I will discuss how "ethnographic dead ends" also serve as tools to understand legal, political, and cultural processes in new ways. This research also highlights that ethnography involves attempting to do no harm to a wide range of individuals who experience life differently, all of whom must be considered when planning and conducting ethnographic research.