Send message to Author

Paper Short Abstract:

This paper examines the embodied experience of occupying a "halfie" position in the ethnography of faith, where researchers navigate insider-outsider roles shaped by their intersectional identities, including gender, class, nationality, and religion. While presumed proximity to communities may ease access, it can also complicate relationships and highten mistrust. By reflecting on the entanglements of researcher identity and positionality, the paper urges a rethinking of traditional ethnographic boundaries, unwriting conventional notions of researcher's authority and legitimacy in the field.

Paper Abstract:

This paper explores the embodied experience of occupying a "halfie" position in the ethnography of faith. Halfie ethnographers, according to Lila Abu-Lughod, are “people whose national or cultural identity is mixed by virtue of migration, overseas education, or parentage” (1991: 137). Returning to their own societies for anthropological research, halfies can be placed somewhere between “native” and “non indigenous” anthropologists, as they work in communities where they have ambivalent claims of membership.

Using critical feminist theories and affective frameworks, I examine how researchers' intersectional identities—such as gender, class, nationality, and religion—shape their engagement with studied communities. Halfies, who navigate both insider and outsider roles, are often presumed to have easier access to their communities due to shared identities. However, this assumed proximity complicates ethnographic relationships, as halfies are neither fully embraced as insiders nor entirely positioned as outsiders, and this liminal status can heighten mistrust rather than ease access. By reflecting on the embodied entanglements of researcher identity and positionality, this paper challenges dominant narratives of ethnographic authority and legitimacy, unwriting traditional boundaries of ethnographic practice.