Anthropology Southern Africa, 2005, 28(3&4) 123 Fieldwork in shared spaces: positionality, power and ethics of citizen anthropologists in southern Africa *Heike Becker, *Emile Boonzaier and **Joy Owen • Anthropolog y and Sociology, University of the Western Cape, R Bag XI7, Bellville 7535 Cape Town, South Africa hbecker@uwc.ac.za). eboonzaier@uwc.ac.za • • Dept . Anthropology, Rhodes University, P O. Box 94, Grahamstown, South Africa j.owen@ru.ac.za The paper reflects on the ethical complexities of fieldwork 'at home' in Cape Town, South Africa and Namibia. It draws on Cheater's (1987) idea of the 'citizen anthropologist' to consider the obligations of resident anthropologists to the subjects of their research. It shows the shifts in understandings of research and the research relationship and explores the power dynamics of such relationships. It argues that anthropologists should be viewed in terms of situated identifications in order to lead the ethics debate towards more historically and politically conscious considerations. Keywords: ethics, positionallty, reflexivity, citizen anthropology, fieldwork Introduction The positionality of anthropologists who reside in, and share a long-term commitment to, the same society as the 'sub- jects' of their research is one of the most conspicuous absences in the vast critical literature on fieldwork that has been published over the past 25 years or so.' Very little has been published on the ethics, power and insider/outsider relations between anthropologists who do fieldwork 'at home' and the people among whom they do their research. We drew a near-blank when we set out to find fieldwork accounts authored by locally-bsised anthropologists of south- ern Africa that reflect on power relations between field researchers and their 'subjects' in 'home' settings. It is true that in recent years some local anthropologists have reflected on doing anthropology at home; reflections on ethics and power in the field 'at home', however, remain rare.^ We were not much more fortunate when we looked fur- ther afield for relevant writings by 'native', 'indigenous' or 'insider' anthropologists from other global regions. Most of the existing writings on 'doing anthropology at home' strike us as particularly unhelpful as they tend to be of a generalising and uncritical nature (see for example Jackson 1987). There appears to be a widely unquestioned assumption that anthro- pologists who do not pack their bags and leave for some 'overseas' place at the end of a fieldwork period quasi-natu- rally engage in more equal and intersubjective relationships with the people studied. This easy equation left us with uneasy feelings. Could this be the case, we wondered, because none of us in the context of the ongoing ethnographic research that we are engaged in 'fits' the conventional image of the 'native' anthropologist? When we compared our extended notes, we realised that •• none of the present authors does fieldwork among people who, 'one way or another, belong to the same cultural area as the anthropologist.' (Hastrup 1987: 94; our emphasis) None of us studies our 'own cultures from a position of intimate affinity' (Narayan 1993: 671), as 'native' anthropologists are believed to do, even if our field site is physically a thoroughly familiar place, only a few minutes drive away from the anthropologist's parental home, as in Owen's case. We differ in terms of 'race', age, gender and country of birth, and so do the people among whom each of us works. Yet, the implications of us doing anthropology are inextrica- bly linked to our shared constructive engagement in the tra- jectories of South Africa and the wider southern African region. Likewise, the 'subjects' of our research, irrespective of their differences, are subjects of the southern African past and present. We came to recognise that the context of direct 1. Clifford & Marcus (1986) and Marcus & Fischer (1986) remain the most frequently cited items; Moore & Vaughan (1994) may serve as an example for field-based studies that have put to use the critique of ethnography. 2. Two notes are in order: Firstly, most fieldwork reflections are 'tucked avi/ay' in unpublished dissertations. Local anthropologists appear to have avoided publishing subjective experiences and reflections. Van der Wcial's (1992) pertinent comment on his colleagues' reluc- tance thus remains valid; his personal narrative still provides an exception. Secondly, understandably in the southern African historical context, perhaps, postgraduate researchers have emphasised shared racial identifications of anthropologists and the people among whom they have worked while glossing over different sets of social boundaries, such as class or lifestyle (see, e.g., Mehlwana 1996). Only a few authors have reflected on the complexities of insider/outsider relations where researchers and 'subjects' share certain markers, such as 'race', language, or religion, but differ along the lines of, among others, class, gender, or ethnicity, (see, Ahmed (2003); Frankenta) (1998); Salo (2004)) These authors provide valuable reflections; none of them, however, directly addresses the issue of power relations in the field 'at home'. 3. We understand intersubjectivity as the reciprocal relations between researchers, the 'subjects' of their research, and specific political- historical contexts, with the aim of reversing earlier claims to authoritative authorship and representation. These considerations of in- tersubjectivity have been greatly helped by our reading of Jackson (1998).