Political scientists who have conducted research abroad experience excitement as well as great disappointment. Meeting and utilizing the help of knowledgeable, responsive interviewees can be exhilarating; yet a cancelled interview, illness, and lack of funds dampens the social scientific enterprise. In this symposium, we discuss the nuts and bolts of field research and we explore the constraints and opportunities that arise from the interaction of researchers' personal identities (gender, race, class, religion, nationality, and age) and their research context. We contend that most training received before fieldwork focuses little, if at all, on the personal consequences of leaving one's home for a year, trying to integrate into another culture, and facing (mis)perceptions based on one's identity. As the quotations above indicate, the symposium hopes to demonstrate how a researcher can be gutsy in the uncharted waters of fieldwork, especially with interactions pertaining to one's identities. Although we acknowledge that no preparation will entirely eradicate disappointing days in the field and misperceptions of identity, we encourage new field researchers and graduate students to be aware that the process of accessing data abroad is an intensely personal one. The symposium contributors are comparativists, mainly at the career stages of assistant professor and recently tenured professor, who have researched in Argentina, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Columbia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Ethiopia, France, India, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Mozambique, Peru, Poland, Russia, Spain, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

The intersection of fieldwork and identity has been broached by many disciplines in social science, such as anthropology, sociology, and geography. Reflexivity, defined as the knowledge of one's own identity and how one is “position[ed] in the social world” (Gouldner Reference Gouldner1970, 489), is a major theme present in these disciplines. Put another way, “relationships between the researcher and the researched are always entangled with systems of social power based on gender, sexuality, class, ‘race’, ethnicity, age, (dis)ability and other factors” (Vanderbeck Reference Vanderbeck2005, 388; see also Dowling Reference Dowling and Hay2000). As a result, researchers practicing reflexivity acknowledge how identity interacts with the research experience, and they weave accounts of identity into their research reports, findings, and conclusions (see also Yanow and Schwartz-Shea Reference Yanow and Schwartz-Shea2006; Mazzei and O'Brien Reference Mazzei and O'Brien2005). Other social science disciplines are also concerned with how researchers' “outsider” identities construct their inquiries into and findings about a society and its “insiders” (see Visweswaran Reference Visweswaran1992; Sundberg Reference Sundberg2003; De Andrade Reference De Andrade2000). Though some gender scholars, for example, have argued that Westerners cannot accurately represent women in developing contexts (see Mohanty Reference Mohanty1988; for more discussion, see Scheyvens and Leslie Reference Scheyvens and Leslie2000), others scholars argue that outsiders, even with a learning curve (Adamson and Donovan Reference Adamson and Donovan2000), spark deep discussions with informants when they ask for clarifications about insider culture and identity, therefore leading to a “multiplicity of perspectives” that may come to bear on “complex … issues” in society (Scheyvens and Leslie Reference Scheyvens and Leslie2000, 127; see also Sundberg Reference Sundberg2003). Finally, other social science disciplines note the prevalence of power relations in the field (see Sundberg Reference Sundberg2003). On one hand, researchers may prove more powerful than their interviewees (in regard to class status, for example). On the other hand, a researcher may hold less power vis-à-vis an interviewee (if, for example, a woman is interviewing a man in a position of power). Power disparities in field research are certainly of concern for both women and men political scientists attempting to access political elites who have higher status than the researchers themselves.

Even though the major themes of identity and research have not penetrated political science to the same extent as in other disciplines, the contributions in this symposium demonstrate that identity is incredibly relevant to political science researchers, and especially to comparativists who go abroad and become outsiders in a social context distinct from their own. Political science as a profession typically only discusses fieldwork practices in its debate over quantitative and qualitative methods, in which identity and reflexivity are associated with the latter, and more specifically with epistemological perspectives that challenge claims of objectivity in social science (see, for discussion, Yanow and Schwartz-Shea Reference Yanow and Schwartz-Shea2006). The contributors to this symposium have varying epistemological persuasions, some of whom, in an interpretivist vein, seek to integrate reflexivity, that is, accounts about their identity into their research findings (see, for example, symposium contributions by Townsend-Bell and Henderson); while others seek to maintain objectivity à la positive social science, and focus on how identity affects the collection of data that they intend to convey with neutrality (see, for example, the symposium contribution by Daniel P. Aldrich). Due to varying perspectives, the symposium as a whole shows that no matter the end goal of data assessment (a positivist or interpretivist account—with or without reflexive details), negotiating one's identity in the field will come up and, thus, one must be equipped with awareness as well as practical tools.

The take-home lessons of this symposium for political scientists are therefore both personal and practical. On the practical side, for example, the contributors discuss use of libraries before going into the field, scheduling of interviews, staying in contact with interviewees and loved ones at home, personal safety as facilitated through new technologies, maintenance of healthy bodies in the face of strenuous research routines, and the use of thank you notes to facilitate future interviews. As per personal experiences, the contributors show how gender, race, class, age, nationality, and religion impact the research experience abroad. In fact, these identities sometimes hinder research but they also sometimes help to advance the research process. In the remaining portions of this essay, we highlight symposium contributions based on these identities, and we show how identities are intersectional, namely that identities such as race, gender, class, age, and sexual orientation are not “essentially separate categories,” but that they instead “intersect” to create particular experiences (and especially those of discrimination) (Crenshaw Reference Crenshaw1991, 1244–5; see also Hancock Reference Hancock2007). Therefore, each author offers multiple contributions, because they each fit into multiple categories. Moreover, the contributors show that certain identities matter at given points in the research process more so than others, thus demonstrating that identities are not fixed in relation to the field, but rather vary based on the researchers' “location within shifting networks of relationships” (Takacs Reference Takacs2002, 169).

Regarding gender, the contributors explore how women interact with men and how women speak to and on behalf of other women. Men often face awkward positioning in the field if “women's freedom in public domains” is restricted and men are seen as “a potential threat to women in the community” (Vanderbeck Reference Vanderbeck2005, 389; also see Angrosino Reference Angrosino, Whitehead and Conaway1986). Women researchers, on the other hand, may face “male interviewees [who] … respond to them with aggression” (Gatrell Reference Gatrell2006, 244). Women researchers may also find that upholding traditional gender norms in their presentation of self may aid in their research access and success. These gender themes are carefully explored in several of the symposium pieces. Symposium contributions by Janet Elise Johnson and Frances B. Henderson illumine the difficulties of completing research while maintaining personal safety as women, whereas Marshall Thompson reflects on his efforts to interview women in a traditional social context that dissuades women and men from meeting together. Contributors also discuss how attributes traditionally associated with women, namely motherhood (see Ortbals and Rincker) and soft-spoken demeanor (see Erica Townsend-Bell) put interviewees at ease. Furthermore, Gina Yannitell Reinhardt explains that she was a “novelty” as an American woman in Brazil, leading her to fend off comments about her body type and multiple sexual advances.

Given race and class differences, it is often the case that women researchers and interviewees misperceive other women (or men misperceive other men). As such, researchers as well as interviewees cannot be understood in terms of “single dimensional status” (De Andrade Reference De Andrade2000, 270). Research shows that white foreign women in Latin America have simultaneously felt privileged by their race to obtain access to powerful informants, yet disadvantaged at “building trust” with women in communities of color (Sundberg Reference Sundberg2003, 184; see also Alcalde Reference Alcalde2007). Being a racial or ethnic insider poses opportunities and challenges as well, for women of color may experience openness among interviewees of color, yet they may be simultaneously evaluated by interviewees on account of their appearance (hair and skin tone) and perceived commitment to the insider community (De Andrade Reference De Andrade2000). Themes of race and class are covered in the contributions in several ways. Henderson reflects on the production of scholarship (who writes about whom) and the privileges afforded to her (but not to black Mozambicans) because of her status as an African American in Mozambique. Townsend-Bell similarly finds that her black identity intersected with her middle-class identity to impact her fieldwork with Afro-Uruguayan women. In essence, her class status—as distinguished by her physical appearance—indicated to potential respondents that she was not poor, and not “typical.” Thompson describes himself as a “racial insider” in Ethiopia and experienced few constraints on account of race but felt privileged in terms of class, whereas Reinhardt, a white woman researcher, found that leaders in the Afrobrasilian movement were unwilling to talk to her at times. Johnson also explains that researchers may experience outright discrimination based on race in certain world regions.

Age, religion, and nationality also impact how people in the field respond to researchers.Footnote ¹ Although young women researchers face incredible power differentials (which Thompson describes as status inconsistencies) vis-à-vis older men interviewees, some have argued that young people can be successful in field research when framing themselves as young, eager learners who want mentors (i.e., the interviewees) to convey experience and knowledge (see Wax Reference Wax1979). Symposium essays by Ortbals and Rincker and Reinhardt concur that respondents often do not perceive young women as serious researchers, thus leading them to recognize how power asymmetries constrain research. In a similar vein, Shareen Hertel, Matthew M. Singer, and Donna Lee Van Cott comment on the intersection of age, education, and status in focus groups. As per religion, Thompson explains that his Christian identity certainly did not constrain his participation in Christian sectors of Kenyan and Ethiopian society, yet Aldrich describes incidents during which people have questioned his Jewish identity. Nationality is yet another identity that the contributors explore. For example, this symposium shows that the status of foreigner often opens doors, though it sometimes closed them as well, especially when respondents are suspicious of what Americans (often viewed negatively) would write about them (see especially the Reinhardt essay).

Finally, several of the contributions address how an outsider identity impacts the navigation of the field, arguing that being an outsider both constrains and facilitates the research process. The Aldrich and Hertel, Singer, and Van Cott essays point out that being an outsider can actually enhance one's ability to collect information, while Townsend-Bell reports that though she felt like an insider among respondents based on shared race and “activist sensibilities” she did not fit perfectly in the field due to her outsider class and national identity.