From Methodological Stumbles to Substantive Insights: Gaining Ethnographic Access in Queer Communities

This article demonstrates precisely how issues of access—in this case differential access to informants and the scenes that they populate in three sites—can reveal substantive findings. In the case it features, a comparative study of small cities with growing populations of lesbian couples, actors’...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Qualitative sociology 2014-03, Vol.37 (1), p.43-68
Main Author: Brown-Saracino, Japonica
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Comparative studies
Cross Cultural Psychology
Gays & lesbians
Gender
Personality and Social Psychology
Sexuality
Social identity
Social Sciences
Sociology
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Summary:This article demonstrates precisely how issues of access—in this case differential access to informants and the scenes that they populate in three sites—can reveal substantive findings. In the case it features, a comparative study of small cities with growing populations of lesbian couples, actors’ disparate and place-specific sexual identities produced disparate and place-specific responses to research. Integrationist sexual identities impeded access, whereas identity-politics orientations facilitated it. The paper identifies three mechanisms via which sexual identities influenced access: directly, by shaping informants’ orientations to the research topic, and, indirectly, by influencing local networks and institutions that emerge from and reinforce local identities. By explicating one ethnographer’s path from methodological trouble to substantive insight, the article traces the utility of an expansive and flexible reflexivity that begins with but extends beyond the researcher’s identity and role. This reflexivity, the article proposes, encourages identification of substantive findings and the development of social theory, and can advance a comparative sociology of ethnographic access.
ISSN:0162-0436
1573-7837
DOI:10.1007/s11133-013-9271-7