Negotiating positionality, reflexivity and power relations in research on men and masculinities in Ghana

Abstract

The main objective of this article is to contribute to a more critical, African-situated understanding of the complexities, emotional vulnerability, and multidimensional positionality that a male researcher is likely to face in conducting fieldwork in a native country. Drawing on my own experiences in conducting fieldwork in northwestern Ghana, the article demonstrates how a male researcher conducting interviews with his fellow countrymen could be constructed within hierarchies of masculinities; where he is simultaneously positioned as a powerless native subject and a powerful researcher. I problematise how my negotiation of fieldwork as a Ghanaian male researcher and my ideological baggage as a gender scholar could be read within the larger politics of gender and geography, as well as feminist intersectional theories. Drawing on these theories as useful analytical guides to foreground my fieldwork experiences and how I interpret my data, allow for critical understanding on the range of cultural norms, taboos, gendered subjectivities, and contested meanings which perpetuate multiple masculinities in fieldwork. My reflection from a postcolonial context contributes to growing global concerns to rethink and decolonise how we approach fieldwork.

Keywords:

• fieldwork
• gender
• Ghana
• insider/outsider identity
• masculinities
• reflexivity
• positionality

Acknowledgement

I am extremely thankful to my respondents for generously sharing with me their thoughts. I am also grateful to three anonymous reviewers of this journal for their thoughtful comments/suggestions. My appreciation also goes to the editors of the journal.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This reflective article forms part of a doctoral research partly funded by the Social Science Research Council’s Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa Fellowship, with funds provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Notes on contributors

Isaac Dery

Isaac Dery holds a PhD in Gender Studies from the University of Cape Town (UCT). His research focuses broadly on constructions of masculinities, social subjectivities, and gender-based violence in Ghana.