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The way that we as researchers view and interpret our social worlds is impacted by where, when, and how we are socially located and in what society. The position from which we see the world around us impacts our research interests, how we approach the research and participants, the questions we ask, and how we interpret the data. In this article, we argue that it is not a straightforward or easy task to conceptualize and practice positionality. We have developed a Social Identity Map that researchers can use to explicitly identify and reflect on their social identity to address the difficulty that many novice critical qualitative researchers experience when trying to conceptualize their social identities and positionality. The Social Identity Map is not meant to be used as a rigid tool but rather as a flexible starting point to guide researchers to reflect and be reflexive about their social location. The map involves three tiers: the identification of social identities (Tier 1), how these positions impact our life (Tier 2), and details that may be tied to the particularities of our social identity (Tier 3). With the use of this map as a guide, we aim for researchers to be able to better identify and understand their social locations and how they may pose challenges and aspects of ease within the qualitative research process. Being explicit about our social identities allows us (as researchers) to produce reflexive research and give our readers the tools to recognize how we produced the data. Being reflexive about our social identities, particularly in comparison to the social position of our participants, helps us better understand the power relations imbued in our research, further providing an opportunity to be reflexive about how to address this in a responsible and respectful way.

Building on the definition offered by Aspers and Corte, I argue that qualitative research is not qualitative simply because it encodes for the ability “to get closer” to the phenomenon being studied, so much as it is anchored by a methodological obligation to critically examine how and why that closeness matters. Qualitative research considers the positionality of both the researcher and the researched as core aspects of inquiry to understand how knowledge and experience are situated, co-constructed, and historically and socially located. This methodological expectation for reflexivity does not just allow for richer data, but also requires researchers to consider power within and surrounding the research process and to employ an ethic of care for their subjects and for the overall work of qualitative research.

Research settings are often multilingual in the sense that researchers and participants speak different first languages. This should be explicitly considered in qualitative research in order to enable or facilitate communication, promote understanding, and allow for context-sensitive analyses of intent and meaning. In this article we comparatively address methodological considerations in two research projects conducted in Austria and Germany. Based on the project-specific context, research interests, sampling strategies, and participants, we developed different methodological approaches to address the respective settings and linguistic needs. We argue that there is no generic guideline but aim to provide orientation for context-specific project design. Based on the assumption that in every research endeavor, a contextualized strategy needs to be developed for the entire project from idea development and project design to the dissemination of results, we highlight language-related decisions throughout qualitative research projects.

For many, reflexivity is a core tenet in qualitative research. Often, scholars focus on how one or two of their socio-demographic traits compare to their participants and how it may influence field dynamics. Research that incorporates an intersectionality perspective, which brings attention to how people’s multiple identities are entwined, also has a long history. Yet, researchers tend to pay less attention to how we strategically draw on our multiple social positions in the course of field work. Drawing on data I have collected over the past several years and extending recent sociological work that goes beyond a reflexive accounting of one or two of researchers’ demographic characteristics, I argue that each researcher has their own ethnographic toolkit from which they strategically draw. It consists of researchers’ visible (e.g. race/ethnicity) and invisible tools (e.g. social capital) and ties qualitative methodologies to research on how culture is strategically and inconsistently used.

When conducting research, a researcher’s perspective and worldview are referred to as positionality. It also “reflects the position that the researcher has chosen to adopt within a given research study” and describes the researcher’s relationship to their research subjects. What the researcher chooses to study, how it is carried out, and the outcomes are all influenced by their position. In this paper, I argue that the positionality of a researcher is shaped by a variety of factors, including gender, race, personal experiences, values, and beliefs. These factors then influence the researchers’ assumptions, methods of accessing and interacting with participants, the questions they pose, and how they interpret the findings. For higher degree research in the social sciences, there should be a section that clarifies researcher positionality. Making these declarations gives the study clarity and credibility in that the researcher is aware of their ‘insider and outsider hat’ so to say. This paper discusses ways in which Masters, Doctor of Education, Doctor of Social Work, Doctor of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, and Ph.D. scholars can explain positionality in their research design. Crucial elements that must be disclosed in the study are the identities, viewpoints, and positions of the researchers. This work contributes to the growing corpus of scholarship on researcher positionality, which is based on my findings as a novice researcher conducting qualitative research. My paper takes an inductive systematic review approach which relates to noting observations and seeking to find patterns within them. I provide examples from my Ph.D. thesis which looked at academic English writing skills of first-year undergraduate students. The examples will be helpful to novice researchers and post-graduate students interested in providing precision in conducting qualitative methodology and examining positionality in their study. They can use the article as a starting point in approaching the concept of researcher positionality and ways in which it can be embedded in their study design.

WEIRD populations, or those categorized as Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic, are sampled in the majority of quantitative human subjects research. Although this oversampling is criticized in some corners of social science research, it is not always clear what we are critiquing. In this article, we make three interventions into the WEIRD concept and its common usage. First, we seek to better operationalize the terms within WEIRD to avoid erasing people with varying identities who also live within WEIRD contexts. Second, we name whiteness as the factor that most strongly unites WEIRD research and researchers yet typically goes unacknowledged. We show how reflexivity is a tool that can help social scientists better understand the effects of whiteness within the scientific enterprise. Third, we look at the positionality of biological anthropology, as not cultural anthropology and not psychology, and how that offers both promise and pitfalls to the study of human variation. We offer other perspectives on what constitutes worthy and rigorous biological anthropology research that does not always prioritize replicability and statistical power, but rather emphasizes the full spectrum of the human experience. From here, we offer several ways forward to produce more inclusive human subjects research, particularly around existing methodologies such as grounded theory, Indigenous methodologies, and participatory action research, and call on biological anthropology to contribute to our understanding of whiteness.

This article resituates the debate on approaches to gender in contexts of natural resource extraction in Latin America and, subsequently, outlines an intersectional, feminist proposal focused on geopolitical positionality, which points to the complex and global power relations that (re)position individuals and collectivities residing in spaces that have geopolitical value in a gendered way. This article draws on both empirical and theoretical research in/on extractive contexts, focusing on women, masculinities, and sexual markets. By paying special attention to the diversity of women’s experiences and productive activities in extractive contexts, this article visibilizes their agency, as well as generates a more accurate account of how extractivist regimes operate and reconfigure gender relations on a local level. This expands existing approaches, allowing a situated, feminist critique, which helps to refine the study of gender and gendered power relations in their intersection with processes of natural resource extraction. Este artículo reubica el debate sobre los abordajes al género en contextos de extracción de recursos naturales en Latinoamérica y, posteriormente, esboza una propuesta feminista interseccional enfocada en la posicionalidad geopolítica, que apunta a relaciones de poder complejas y globales que (re) posicionan de forma genérica a individuos y colectividades residentes en espacios de valor geopolítico. Este artículo se basa en investigación empírica y teórica en contextos extractivos, centrada en mujeres, masculinidades y mercados sexuales. Prestando especial atención a la diversidad de las experiencias y actividades productivas de las mujeres en contextos extractivos, este artículo visibiliza su agencia, así como genera un relato más acertado de cómo los regímenes extractivistas operan y reconfiguran las relaciones de género a nivel local. Esto amplía abordajes existentes, permitiendo una crítica feminista situada, que ayuda a refinar el estudio de género y las relaciones genéricas de poder en su intersección con los procesos de extracción de recursos naturales.

How should scholars recognize and respond to the complexities of positionality during the research process? Although there has been much theorizing on the intersectional and context-dependent nature of positionality, there remains a disjuncture between how positionality is understood theoretically and how it is applied. Ignoring the dynamism of positionality in practice has implications for the research process. This article theorizes one means of recognizing and responding to positionality in practice: a posture of “active reflexivity.” It outlines how we can become actively reflexive by adopting a disposition toward both ongoing reflection about our own social location and ongoing reflection on our assumptions regarding others’ perceptions. We then articulate four strategies for doing active reflexivity: recording assumptions around positionality; routinizing and systemizing reflexivity; bringing other actors into the process; and “showing our work” in the publication process.

Ethnographers immerse themselves in the lifeworlds of their participants—including their language practices—through participant observation. In this process, researchers’ linguistic repertoires, along with the language choices and practices they enable, play a central role in co‐constructing positionality within emergent interactions. These interactions both shape and are shaped by locally situated meaning‐making, reflecting the dynamics of the research context. This article examines the dynamic construction of positionality in multilingual research contexts. Drawing on four linguistic ethnographies conducted at a metal foundry, a preschool, a secondary school, and dairy farms, the analysis identifies four key dimensions through which researcher positionality is constructed via language practices: attuning to, engaging in, translating, and recognizing participants’ linguistic practices. Multilingual research contexts, we argue, introduce additional layers of complexity to the construction of positionality and call for critical reflection on the language practices of both ethnographers and participants.