To add to my previous post…

I just spotted this on another blog [The Hampshire Feminist Collective: ‘The legacies of Orientalism and the exoticizing of women’]:

“The brilliant Emi Koyama once said “There’s no innocent way of being in this world”, meaning that no one, not even the most enlightened among us, can exist outside of history, outside of the legacies of colonial violence that shaped the world we inhabit.” — Tassja, The Jasmine Diaries Part II: ‘Exotic’ is Not a Compliment.

This might help to clarify, even if just a little, what I was I think trying to convey at the end of the post [here if you can’t find it].

My Positionality as a Researcher

Before diving in and talking about this, I should probably first explain what on earth I mean by my positionality. I mean, how I am perceived by the participants of my research. I mean how I perceive them. What pre-existing factors are influencing the relationship between me and my participants? I need to be considering how things such as my appearance, my language, my body language, my expressions, my actions and much more are read by my participants – I need to try to see myself as they see me, and then work towards understanding what sort of impact this may be having on my findings – will my participants be consciously (or subconsciously) censoring themselves, how they act, what they say etc.? It is also useful to know what sort of discourses are present in popular culture, and even in traditional culture, regarding the typical, white, western female, as regardless of how I behave, these deeply rooted discourses in the imaginations of my participants will also affect how we interact, just as the traditional and modern discourses surrounding rural women in Sri Lanka will also impact upon interactions. What makes this so hard to establish is that very often we’re not even aware of the pre-existing thoughts and ideas we have of people before we meet them, as stereotypes can so swiftly become ingrained in the psyche, especially when these are stereotypes that have been around for as long as we can remember.

Pause for a moment, and think, what does the word ‘orient’ mean to you? What images come to mind? And why? What put those images there in the first place? Are they accurate, do you think? (I choose the word Orient as an example for a number of reasons: Edward Said wrote a book called Orientalism that is held in very high regard across the world, which discusses in detail the discursive relations and understandings of ‘other’ cultures; I am doing research in a country that was/is seen as part of the ‘Orient’, and which has frequently come under the focus of ‘tropical geography’ and ‘tropical geographers’; the theme of a friend’s party recently was ‘Black Tie with a hint of the Orient’… Just a little food for thought.

Harmless as discourses regarding different peoples and different cultures around the world may seem, they have been the root cause of a great deal of prejudices that exist in the world today, including ethnic prejudice, gendered prejudice, class prejudice, and many more. I want to ensure that I don’t reproduce any of these prejudices in my research and in my write up, or at least, I want to make sure they are minimised as much as possible, and that any discourses and pre-existing prejudices that creep into my work are recognised and understood. If you look back to my entry about postcolonialism in method, I explain a little more about researcher positionality, and if you’re really interested in the topic, I cannot recommend enough Edward Said’s book on orientalism.

Thanks to colonialism, there are very deep power relations between the East and the West, with a number of dichotomous connotations, with some of the most common being the ‘inferior’ and the ‘superior’, the ‘dark’ and the ‘light’ (not only in terms of appearance – think Enlightenment – we found the light whilst other parts of the world were left in the dark), the ‘savage’ and the ‘civilised’. As a white girl entering a factory full of Sri Lankan girls, despite my dislike of these binaries and representations of ‘other’ cultures, I must be aware of them. I cannot know exactly how I am perceived by the factory workers, but I am going to lots of measures to make sure we are on level footing with one another. Appearance aside, I am entering the factory as a friend of the owner’s daughter, so just because of that there may be some girls who are associating me with authority, and thus inwardly acknowledging a power relation. Breaking down power relations entirely is, I think, impossible. But here are the things I’ve been doing to help things along:

• I wear flip flops to work – nothing special, and Baba G hates them – and then I take them off and pad around bare-foot, like most of the other girls do too.
• I am trying to learn the language. The girls speak the occasional word or phrase in English, so I in return am doing the same in Sinhalese, and making plenty of mistakes as I go, so they are having to help and teach me as I go along.
• I laugh and smile a lot, to make myself seem friendly and approachable, and more friend than colleague. Even when walking past the production lines, I try to flash not just a polite smile but a friendly smile at each of the workers, and will make it seem like I recognise them even if I don’t. There are so many faces to remember, but I’m walking the same way everyday and I know therefore that I’m walking past the same girls, so I always try to make it look like I recognise them, which is appreciated I think.
• I arrive on time, and try not to leave before the others leave. Flaunting in late might make it appear that I am not taking the job seriously, and that I am somehow above it. Baba G teases me for it, but I get very anxious if I’m running even a tiny bit late. [lunch issue]
• I join them for tea – managers drink their tea in a small room off the main canteen, not visible to the workers, whilst supervisors and HR staff and the like will sit at separate tables labelled ‘staff’ at that end of the canteen. The managers initially asked me to join them there, but I declined. I always sit with the girls from my packing line. There seems to be a set group who sit together, usually on the same table, or one very nearby.
• I join in with jokes where possible, when I understand key words, and today crept up on Chamila as a joke.
• I make little harmless jokes about Baba G, who they refer to as Miss. This is actually a little naughty of me, so I only do that with the girls I’m closest too – but by altering slightly in their minds their perception of Baba G, and making her seem a little more human than director, I feel it’ll work in my favour also. I would rather be Baba G’s friend than the director’s friend. Sorry Baba G – if none of them have any respect for you in the future, you have me to blame…
• On a similar vein, when Baba G and I went to Chamila’s house, I requested that Baba G wear flip flops instead of heels, remove her Dior glasses, and tie her hair neatly like most of the girls at the factory do. Again, although this is not directly to do with me and my positionality, I feel that it helps to bring Baba G down to as approachable a level as possible. Besides, she walks better in flat shoes…
• I always refer to Mr and Mrs G as Sir and Madam, showing that I see myself as inferior to them in the factory hierarchy, as of course the girls will too.
• I ask Padman the driver to wait outside for me, rather than have him come over to the packing section to get me. Otherwise, I have to walk past all the other workers following a man who is quite clearly a member of Family G’s staff. Not good if I want to reduce power relations.

I think the tactics above are working quite well. I’ve heard the word ‘yaluwa’ when Chamila is talking about me, and I think she is inferring that she and I are friends, and not just Baba G and I. I get arms slung round me, hands occasionally holding mine, and limbs draped over me if we’re sitting down on boxes at the start of work. This may sound a bit odd, but there is a lot of (totally innocent) physical contact between friends, I’ve noticed. It’s only the girls who are like this with me, but I’ve noticed that the boys are very close with each other also, and even the boys and girls in the factory who are friends will behave like this. Also, it’s not always girls who I know doing this. If I was anybody with any authority walking around, girls wouldn’t dream of coming up and holding my arm as they walk along, I don’t think. The fact that they are shows, I think, that they are seeing me as friend rather than colleague.

Something I’ve just realised is that I am assuming that the pre-existing power relation is that I am perceived as being at the superior end of the relation. I am assuming that this is how they see me, due to colonial relations and discourses but perhaps, although I seriously hope not, on some subconscious level I am also seeing myself as superior. The mind is a very strange thing, so it really is difficult to know what ideas you internalise, but I am aware of the assumption that I’ve made, so I suppose this does mean that at some level, there is prejudice present. I don’t know. This is in danger of turning into some kind of auto psychoanalytical waffle, in which I’ll doubtlessly dig a hole. I think it’s something I need to think carefully about though. It may well be that the girls all see themselves as superior to me (and I think by now that is starting to be the case – I’ve made a few really silly mistakes in the packing section – upside down stickers etc), but something in me still tells me it was, at least initially, the other way round.