How to take sides: on the challenges of managing positionality

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to offer an overview of contemporary approaches to the challenge of managing positionality and to discuss their applicability to fieldwork in contested fields.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is driven by the author's experience of disconcertment during her fieldwork for a study of economic prioritization of access to new pharmaceuticals. Here she was pushed to take sides between health economists, clinicians and patients. Based on an iterative literature review, the paper identifies contemporary approaches to side-taking and discusses their practical applicability by constructing counterfactual accounts of a specific situation related to her fieldwork.FindingsThe author provides an overview of three “modes of intervention” characteristic of contemporary ethnography: political activism, organizational development and intervening description. The author presents the research agenda, the methodological principles and the means of intervention of each of the three modes, and discusses their applicability to the fieldwork process.Practical implicationsThe overview of contemporary approaches to managing positionality is relevant for researchers doing fieldwork in contested fields. The paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches, and is intended as a resource for ethnographers who want to clarify their own positionality and prepare or improve their strategies on how to take sides in the process of doing fieldwork.Originality/valueWhile the question of how to take sides is a classical challenge for organizational ethnographers, only few studies exist that look across contemporary ethnographic positions on how to manage positionality in the process of doing fieldwork. In addition to providing an overview for the individual ethnographer, this paper aims to participate in a collective academic conversation on the subject of managing positionality in the process of doing fieldwork.