Double Reflexivity: The Politics of Friendship, Fieldwork and Representation within Ethnographic Studies of Young People

Abstract

This chapter is a joint production focused on the politics of fieldwork and the representation of young people in ethnography. The paper brings together the Ph.D. supervisor and the doctoral student, focused on three thematic issues derived from their separate fieldwork: risk, friendship and integrity. We look across the different research sites and select examples as part of a joint research imaginary where we have identified a commonality of experience and understanding (Marcus, 1998). Moving beyond the uniqueness of the ethnographic experience we want to share how research friendship enabled us to integrate the research subjects into our lives in an attempt to obtain authentic voices. In a theoretical sense, we have tried to achieve this through reflexivity in fieldwork, which takes into consideration the feeling of the research subjects as we seek to represent them in the text. We came to an understanding that there were two defining moments of reflexivity, one in fieldwork and one in representation. Although ethnography demands that fieldwork, analysis and writing all occur simultaneously, we want to draw attention to the fact that the ethnographer, when writing-up, returns to the field through the research imaginary, and encounters what we call the double reflexivity.