Reflecties over de rol van positionaliteit in etnografisch onderzoek naar geweldservaringen in politiewerk

Positionality in ethnographic police research

Ethnographers typically immerse themselves in a setting or milieu to understand how people in a specific context give meaning to their world, experiences, and behaviors. Given their immersion in a field, ethnographers engage in a crucial process known as reflexivity. In recent years, reflexivity has evolved to encompass a focus on positionality which can be understood in terms of aspects of the self, such as age, sexuality, race, ethnicity, nationality, as well as multiple social positions that researchers strategically draw upon during fieldwork. Classic male-oriented police ethnographic accounts, however, rarely include a reflection on how researchers’ positionality shaped the research process. Fortunately, a growing number of female policing scholars reflect on how their positionality and gendered power dynamics impacted the course of their research. In this article, I discuss how my positionality affected fieldwork during a long-term multi-site ethnographic study of violent interactions within the Dutch police force. I specifically reflect on three dimensions that impacted the research process: my gender, race/ethnicity, and former profession as a social worker, part of my ‘ethnographic toolkit’. The latter, especially, helped to navigate discomfort, gain access, and build rapport.