Paper short abstract:

This is a paper about the shifting boundaries of the self and the other in developing a sense of belonging to “the field” and to “home”. It is concerned particularly with the religious, familial and secular aspects of the self and how they affect the “nativeness” of the native anthropologist in Turkey.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the possibilities and challenges of doing fieldwork "at home" by focusing on the constant re-positioning of the self (both of the ethnographer and of the research participants) in accordance with the emotional, sensual and social ties one establishes with different localities. It draws upon my fieldwork experience of studying religious and secular subjectivities in two multi-cultural and multi-religious cities of Turkey: Istanbul (my home city) and Antakya (a city near Turkey's border with Syria). On the one hand, I examine how different religious communities in these cities draw the boundaries of the self and the other at the level of the individual, the family and the community. On the other hand I reflect on the way the ethnographer becomes part of this boundary-making as she oscillates between being a total stranger, being a "guest" and inhabiting the very subject positions she studies. This paper draws attention to the inter-subjective nature of such displacements and replacements. To do so, I compare the different ways in which I was perceived, challenged and attributed certain roles/qualities in these two cities. I argue that hearing, seeing, feeling and belonging to a particular location as the "field" and as "home" depends not only on the content but also on the sociality of the familial and religious histories one has (or lacks) about that location.