When the researcher becomes a subject of ethnographic research: Studying “myself” and “others” in Gaza

SYNOPSISThis paper examines the model of ethnographic framing of the self/other relationship, and how this framing contributes to de-essentializing the theorizing of women's agency and subjectivity. The paper reflects on my own PhD field research experience conducted during 2007–2008 in the Gaza Strip. In a situation where the researcher and the research subject share the spatial history, as well as the multiple positionalities in their life cycle, the researcher's self inevitably becomes a subject of the ethnography. The analysis in this paper transcends the simplicity of the interactive relations between ‘researchers’ and ‘researched’. It rather depends upon a much more nuanced recognition of the shared subjective experiences of both ethnographers and their subjects of ethnography. The paper concludes that the relocation of the ethnographer to be a subject of research helps her to be critical of her own epistemological feminist knowledge.