A Stranger at Home

Paper proposal for the planned handbook “Accompanied Fieldwork in Anthropology”, edited by Julia Koch-Tshirangwana, Judit Tavakoli & Sophia Thubauville, cp. GAA Working Group „Family in the Field” & Handbook Project “Accompanied Fieldwork in Anthropology”

In my paper I discuss the notion of membership (ten Have 2002) and the role of fulfilling Garfinkel’s “unique adequacy requirement of methods” (Meier zu Verl / Meyer / Oberzaucher 2023) in conducting anthropological research in my home region, Central Asia. How does being a member – familiar with the cultural environment and equipped with local knowledge, particularly language proficiency – enhance understanding of how actors use ethnic categories in everyday language? Regarding the unique adequacy requirement of the methods, I address several methodological issues: 1. the importance of balancing cultural proximity and strangeness, e.g., due to professional ties; 2. strategies for achieving analytical distance to interpret culturally shaped practices of ethnicization, employing conversation analysis as a key method.

The pragmatic meaning of such practices is usually seen but unnoticed by members deeply involved in the dramas of everyday life. The same applies to researchers who are – or become – members of the society in which ethnographic fieldwork takes place. The discussion draws on my long-term ethnographic fieldwork in a rural hospital in Kazakhstan, where I used videography (Meyer 2018) to capture everyday activities in the hospital. Relationships of reciprocal trust were a crucial aspect of this fieldwork, a process significantly supported by my daughter and husband. Not only did they accompany me during the fieldwork, but they also actively contributed to the collection and analysis of various types of data, highlighting the significant role of family ties in the production of anthropological knowledge.

Bachyt Muratbayeva, PhD student in Social Anthropology at the Martin-Luther-University, Halle/Saale (Germany), email: b.muratbayeva@icloud.com