(photo by S. B.)
I recently read two ethnographic texts about the Arabian Peninsula. Both are well-researched, with many cites from interlocutors and relevant texts but both made me very uncomfortable. Each text examines a sub-set of the population within one Arabian Peninsula country. One author clearly lauds the studied group; the other has a clear animosity towards their group.
There were two interconnected issues. First is that, to me, the texts will have an outsize impact. Both texts are about groups which has not been previously studied and both authors are very well positioned within the milieu of North American/ UK/ EU academia with impressive CVs and permanent jobs in well-regraded institutions.
Thus the two authors will be widely accepted as knowing spokespersons for the countries studied, yet there are many small mistakes in the texts, such as giving places the wrong name, as well as larger concerns. One researcher looked at a subset of a population but because of limited time and narrow focus, the text makes claims of distinctiveness of the group studied which are actually not distinctive, i.e., traits described as being particular to this group I have frequently seen in other groups. To me, the result is awarding a special status to one group of people who share the same social traits with other groups. And there is no way to correct this as I doubt the researcher would want to go back in the field and work with other groups.
There are many slanted comments. For example, one text mentions that a certain group of expats are treated in a negative way when they arrive on the Arabian Peninsula in that they were subject to extensive medical checks and would be deported if there were found to have various diseases, but that is true for anyone, be they laborer, salesclerk, CEO or professor.
A few months ago, I went to get a health check done so I could renew my work visa. At the clinic, by chance, there was a male Omani professor who had brought an expat woman who he had hired to work in his house. That women and I went through the same set of medical tests (including blood drawn and chest x-ray) at the same time. But reading the text, one could easily assume that this kind of bodily investigation only happened to expat workers who had non-professional jobs.
However, the bigger issue for me is that their understandings about the people they are talking to/ about is the same at the start of their work and the end. I happened to meet one of the researchers at the very beginning of their work; the second is clear about their attitudes at the start of the project and that point of view is identical to where they theoretically ended up.
And I am troubled that a researcher’s perceptions of a group of people is exactly the same at the beginning and conclusion of a project. In terms of these two books, with one researcher who was clearly positive about their interlocutors and one who was clearly negative – to go in positive and find only positives, to go in negative and find only negatives seems too easy for me. Were there no surprises? No readjustments? If you can’t articulate both some negatives and some positives about the people you are working with, I wonder if you are well-grounded in their lives.
I feel that everyone is ‘othered’ and out of depth as soon as they leave their home space(s). If you have grasped a foreign culture in its entirety so much so that you don’t change any of your starting attitudes, you are amazingly prescient or perhaps there wasn’t enough time or some other issue is in play.
To me, transformation of original conceptions is an important part of doing ethnographic work – there needs to be space for discovery, reassessment, new considerations; if someone hasn’t shifted their beliefs at all, I am a little wary.
Reflections on Ethnographic Research – What is Missing and What Changes
Reflections on Ethnographic Research – Getting it Wrong
Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Changes within Cultures
Come From Away 
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