A deaf researcher in an Indian and Norwegian context – an autoethnographic journey

Abstract

By taking an autoethnographic approach I intend to explore my epistemological and ontological experiences as a deaf Norwegian PhD candidate on a data collection journey in an Indian context. The aim of this article is to delve into challenges in a research process with a complex and multilinguistic environment, with barriers occurring, and how they could be understood and met. I identify and discuss barriers and possibilities in my research journey, describe how I faced challenges with gaining access to the field, and with recruitment issues, and share my process of finding solutions regarding communication. The autoethnographic analysis reveals a complex research situation with dynamic relationships and displays intersectionality in action. This analysis illuminates how knowledge production is linked to epistemological and ontological concerns. The reflexivity of the researcher is crucial, but the power of definition is also of interest and points to my shifting positionality as a deaf researcher.

Points of Interest

• The experiences and reflections of a deaf researcher from Norway, in the Global North, doing research in India, in the Global South, with deaf Indian women, are described and analysed.

• One topic concerns dealing with the fact that people use various local, regional, and national languages, and might not understand each other.

• This paper further explores the resources within deaf networks, also referred to as Deaf Space, and emphasises the need for researchers to approach the experience of being a deaf woman in India with sensitivity.

• As a researcher from the Global North and a deaf person, my activity in the Global South, in India, was influenced by my different positions.

• Undertaking research with deaf people in a context that differs from the researcher’s usual context requires ongoing reflection throughout the different aspects of the research process.

Keywords:

• Autoethnography
• fieldwork
• deaf women
• intersectionality
• multilingualism
• sign language

Introduction

By taking an autoethnographic approach I intend to explore my epistemological and ontological experiences as a deaf Norwegian PhD candidate on a journey, collecting data in an Indian context. The aim of this article is to delve into challenges in a research process with a complex and multilinguistic context, with barriers occurring, and how they could be understood and met.

Conducting research with deaf people implies several epistemological and ontological questions, where issues of linguistic, cultural minority and disability intersect (Young and Temple 2014; Friedner 2017; Friedner and Kusters 2015; Friedner 2016; Emery and Iyer 2022). Ontology refers to the experience of being in the world, where knowledge is connected to the body, and the production of knowledge – epistemology – is through the ontology of the body. As any given ontology is influenced by the affordances of the bodies doing the experiencing, it may not be possible to disconnect the ways of understanding and acting in the world from the experiences of the deaf persons (Young and Temple 2014). According to Friedner (2016), being deaf implies experiencing restricted information and communication with persons without sign language, which the author calls the ‘lens of understanding’. This lens is part of the epistemology of deaf people, who value understanding and non-understanding as part of the ontology of being deaf in society. Young and Temple (2014, 2) argue that ‘to be deaf is to stand at multiple intersections of language, culture, disability, society, politics, ethics, and the body’, and point to awareness of the connections between ontological and epistemological issues when dealing with research concerning deaf persons (Young and Temple 2014, 29-55). Whose voices we uplift and potentially silence in the frame of power asymmetries is one crucial issue, urging the researcher to critically examine the scientific work (Young and Temple 2014).

Disability has increasingly become a theme in feminist theory (Garland-Thomson 2002; Ghai 2002; Bê 2012), and underlines the varieties of experiences among women. This stresses the importance of conducting research with deaf women, noting the influences of various factors in addition to being a woman in culturally different contexts. Deaf women in Norway and India live in different contexts and conditions. Indian women seem to face a higher frequency of serious threats and challenges, such as gender-based violence and discrimination. Caste and class background can affect the situation of Indian women more than Norwegian women. In the case of disabled women, the contrast is even more consequential (Addlakha 2008; Agnihotri and Patel 2007; Price and Goyal 2016; Kayama, Johnstone, and Limaye 2021). These differing contexts challenged me to recognise my position as a white, middle-class female researcher from Norway supported by a strong welfare state. This contrasted with the Indian context, where the welfare state to a lesser degree offers public services to deaf people. As a researcher from Norway, assumptions are made based on knowledge of a Norwegian context. Language diversity in Norway is a very different issue, with fewer official languages to deal with compared to India. The stigmas produced, and how to approach and interact with people, are also diverse. To carry out my research, I was required to explore these differences and deal with them reflexively, to process my own biases (Friedner 2017; Emery and Iyer 2022; Alvesson and Sköldberg 2018).

Awareness of contextual differences between the Global North and the Global South is important in research (Friedner 2017; Moriarty Harrelson 2017; Friedner and Kusters 2014; Emery and Iyer 2022). Norway offers free social and healthcare benefits, including hearing aids and cochlear implants. Additionally, sign language interpreters are offered to users at no cost. Education in mainstream schools aims for inclusion, with bilingual education in Norwegian and Norwegian Sign Language mandated deaf pupils by law. India has a welfare state, but the family and the economic capacity of the family are of greater importance, where access to education, sign language and interpreters rely to some extent on the family’s financial circumstances (Kayama, Johnstone, and Limaye 2021). Access to information and communication with non-signing persons is affected by having access to interpreting services, and further influences the deaf person’s possibilities in society. Research performed on continents with dissimilar contexts emphasises the importance of the role, performance and reflexivity of the researcher (Chang 2008; Friedner 2017; Chhabra 2020; Friedner and Kusters 2014). The dynamic process of data gathering in the field posed challenges both for me as a researcher and for the use of scientific tools in data gathering. The outcome of the process also depended on how I as a researcher approached each challenge, my awareness of what was at stake in the process, and my ability and opportunity to turn challenges into possibilities. My autoethnographic analysis of my work and actions as a researcher throughout this process disclosed a complexity where personal and structural factors in conjunction produce complex results in diverse ways.

Friedner (2017), Moriarty Harrelson (2017) and Friedner and Kusters (2014) critically discuss the assumptions of global similarities in being a deaf person. Their examples from fieldwork in Ghana and India (Friedner and Kusters 2014; Friedner 2017), and Cambodia (Moriarty Harrelson 2017), display epistemological and ontological issues connected to factors such as asymmetric power relations between deaf persons, and researchers, coming from the Global North or the Global South. Awareness of the influence from different Global North and Global South contexts may be crucial not only for research performed in the Global South, but also in Northern contexts. Emery and Iyer (2022) show in their research of two deaf migrants coming from Africa that the context of where they came from influenced the deaf migrants’ experiences in London. Meekosha (2011) criticises the lack of a critical view of knowledge production in disability studies, the positions of privilege held by researchers from the Global North in research of disability, and the historic context of what the researcher from the Global North may represent in the Global South. The history of European colonialism in India underlines the importance of being aware and reflective in my actions as a researcher from the Global North. In the following, some aspects concerning disability and deafness and an Indian context are introduced, before a presentation of the research project is provided. Autoethnography as a methodology and the data used in this analysis are accounted for. Findings are organised under the themes: deaf world resources, recruiting in different contexts, and the researcher’s sensibility in the fieldwork process, followed at the end of the article by a discussion of the themes.

Disability and deafness

Different models of disability highlight different aspects of the experience of being deaf. A medical approach will define disability as a pathological condition or lack of hearing capacity. A linguistic–cultural model will focus on the population of deaf persons as a linguistic minority with cultural and social features (Hedlund 2009; Lane 2005; Haualand 2006; Breivik 2005; Young and Temple 2014). In the latter model the term ‘deafness’ is a contested term for researchers, as the term mirrors the standards of the medical model based on a conception of hearing status as ‘normal’ (Young and Temple 2014). In this article, I use the term ‘deaf’, and refer to the ontological and epistemological positions in disability studies as being deaf in a cultural and linguistic model, and not as having a disability, as often presented in the medical model.

Different definitions of disability and varying criteria for registering disabled persons produce differing numbers of persons with disabilities (Eide and Loeb 2016; Loeb 2013). The inconsistency in population numbers with a hearing disability may thus be seen as an example of varying interpretations and registrations of hearing disability (World Health Organization and The World Bank 2011). Reliable sources for how many deaf persons are living in India can be hard to find. It is estimated that there are millions of deaf people in India, with its population of over 1.3 billion people within an area of more than 3 million km² (UNdata 2023).

Indian context

The concept of disability in an Indian context is connected to a variety of issues, such as gender, cultural perceptions, class and caste (Kayama, Johnstone, and Limaye 2021; Ghai 2002; Grech 2016). The gendered aspects of being a woman could give rise to additional challenges with safety issues and expectations of marriage (Kayama, Johnstone, and Limaye 2021, 602).

India has a complex linguistic environment, with more than 100 spoken languages and no single common language (Thiesen 2022). India is also a vast country with 28 states, each with its own official language in addition to Hindi. English is used as the language of administration and is the lingua franca in higher education in the country, but does not hold status as an official language in India (Thiesen 2022). Knowledge of Hindi and/or English among the people of India varies. For Pune city in the state of Maharashtra, where the research was conducted, Marathi and Hindi are the official languages.

For deaf people, signed languages are the languages to which they may have unrestricted access, yet as a general rule, deaf people live in surroundings where oral languages predominate and interpreting services are generally not available (Friedner 2016; Young and Temple 2014; Kusters 2017; Vasishta 2006; Friedner 2015). In India, some deaf people do not learn sign language; this occurs especially in rural areas where the population is sparse and there are no deaf schools in close proximity (Vasishta 2006; Zeshan, Vasishta, and Sethna 2005; Friedner 2016; Friedner 2015). The number of sign languages in the country is unknown (Zeshan, Vasishta, and Sethna 2005). In the city of Pune, I experienced local versions of sign languages. The schools for deaf persons in the city have developed local sign languages. Deaf people in Pune told me, as I also observed, that deaf people in the city experienced restricted mobility because transport was time-consuming and difficult. This may have influenced the development of different versions of sign language, as there was little contact between groups of deaf people from different neighbourhoods.

The research project

Originally, this PhD project was intended to be a comparative mixed method study (Creswell and Creswell 2018, 15-16), where the experiences of deaf women in Norway and in India would be investigated and the two groups compared. My research of deaf people in India was based on several types of data from a research stay from January to March 2020 in Pune, including a four-day stay in New Delhi. The data used in the autoethnographic analysis comprises observation notes from meetings with deaf persons in India and communications on social media, photographs, informal and formal dialogues with participants across various contexts and activities, field notes, reflection notes, logs, and calendars, emails and correspondence with academics, interpreter services, and organisations.

Prior to going to India for fieldwork, I intentionally sent a video in Norwegian Sign Language with English text in an email, giving information about the research project and introducing myself as the researcher. My intention was to get in touch with deaf schools and organisations in India that also had some knowledge of using a local sign language. This effort was fruitless, despite several attempts. There may be several reasons, including the fact that the request came from a stranger; and the recipients of the video had no way of knowing my intentions or of determining whether this was a serious inquiry or a scam. It may also be a reflection of the power dynamics, where I, as a researcher from the Global North, come to Pune to interview people from the Global South. With the history of colonialism in India in mind (Meekosha 2011), it seemed crucial to have someone to introduce me and my project, in order to insert me into the field and to reassure the parties that my research project was in the interest of elevating the voice of deaf women from the Global South. In any case, my strategy of contacting deaf schools in India by email turned out to be futile, so I focused on other strategies such as networks of deaf people.

As a visiting scholar in India, I had an agreement with the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV) to bring Norwegian Sign Language interpreters with me to India. These interpreters were funded by NAV and tasked with interpreting from spoken English to Norwegian Sign Language (NTS). They assisted at meetings and social events at the local university, where all participants were hearing people using spoken language. The interpreters also provided their services when I travelled around the city to have conversations and meetings with hearing Indian research assistants and in meetings with the (hearing) Indian Sign Language interpreter. Norwegian Sign Language and Indian Sign Language are two different languages developed in diverse contexts. Working with the Norwegian interpreters turned out to be a project in itself, trying to overcome the challenge of finding a common language, as we did not know Indian Sign Language, local sign languages, Marathi or Hindi, and I am not able to hear spoken English.

My search for a way to communicate with the deaf women in the project included developing a complex constellation of communication and languages, including Indian Sign Language, Marathi/local Sign Language, International Sign, Norwegian Sign Language, written English, oral English, written Marathi and oral Marathi. The challenges also encompassed designing the research and addressing communication issues during data collection. To assist me in the data gathering, I contracted two female Indian research assistants, who did not know Indian Sign Language, but had relevant master’s degrees from the local university. Initially, the plan involved employing two Indian Sign Language (ISL) interpreters, two Norwegian Sign Language (NTS) interpreters, and two Indian research assistants to facilitate communication with research participants. However, due to the unavailability of ISL interpreters, this plan had to be abandoned, prompting me to explore alternative modes of communication for data collection. I started to use short, pre-recorded videos of questions in Indian Sign Language recorded by one ISL interpreter who lived in another part of India, and I used questionnaires in written English and Marathi. Before I went to India, I had requested an ISL interpreter to work with me, but during the stay in India this person withdrew from the assignment. Eventually, I contracted one ISL interpreter who worked full-time at an organisation in the same city as I was working in. However, this ISL interpreter had limited availability to assist me in the project, narrowed down to a few hours on weekends. I experienced the search for solutions as long and demanding.

Autoethnography and the deaf researcher

Taking an autoethnographical approach may display the multiple aspects of research, where the researcher is the main tool. Situating a deaf researcher in disability research in an analytical and interpretative frame makes it possible to explore the questions of how and why challenges occur, undertaking analysis and interpretation of subjects at a level that yields complicated epistemological and ontological questions (Chang 2008; Ellis, Adams, and Bochner 2011; Haualand 2017). Haualand (2017) demonstrates how the reflexive process of the researcher was crucial in her research, where she points to her experiences with inclusion and exclusion when doing fieldwork. The methodology of autoethnography may open up insights that the researcher gains, when the researcher himself experiences being an insider in the research field (O’Connell 2017).

Autoethnography may be split into three elements; personal experiences (auto), related to the research process are understood within a cultural setting (ethno), and are described and systematically analysed (graphy) (Chang 2008, 48; Ellis, Adams, and Bochner 2011, 1; Ellis and Bochner 2000, 740).

Researcher’s positionality

To explore my position as a deaf researcher, I executed a culture-gram analysis inspired by Heewon Chang’s Cultural identity and cultural membership (Chang 2008, 97). In my analysis, I explore my distinct roles and identities enacted in my life, and how they reveal various aspects of my identity and life as a researcher. The fact that I live in both hearing and deaf worlds, living with my hearing family with spoken language, and having a social life with deaf friends with signed language; and that I am a middle-class white woman living in the Norwegian welfare state in the Global North, gives some indication of location markers for my ontological and epistemological standpoints (Chang 2008; Young and Temple 2014; Haualand 2017; Scully 2012; Friedner 2016; Friedner and Kusters 2014). I grew up in a hearing family, with a brother who identified himself as a hard of hearing person without sign language. I was free to pursue my interests and my parents encouraged me to choose education based on my own interests. This gave me opportunities which cannot be taken for granted by everyone. As a child, my experiences were shaped by having an identity as a hard of hearing person living among hearing people without sign language; and experiencing the medical model as a lived reality with a focus on hearing aids and technical instruments to strengthen my ability to hear. As an adult with sign language, I identify more as a deaf person and a sign language user, still living in a world dominated by hearing, non-signing persons. With my increasing focus on Norwegian Sign Language, I gained an understanding of disability, and especially of being deaf. I experienced a shift from an epistemology and ontology that defined me as lacking something which should be fixed, where the experiences of barriers and individualised challenges were primary concerns; to being deaf with resources and access to several communities with sign language and a focus on possibilities. Sign language opened new worlds to me, granting access regardless of hearing status. I increased my participation within both deaf worlds and hearing worlds, thanks to sign language interpreting, which reduces the language barriers related to hearing impairment. I position myself as a deaf person, being pragmatic in my daily life actions, and adjusting language to the situation and persons present. The culture-gram analysis also made me aware of my experiences gained from living with a husband and family from the Caribbean; and from working with people in the Caribbean and Central America. These encounters gave me an understanding of how different contexts may give diverse perceptions. The culture-gram analysis made clearer to me my subject position as a researcher with the roles of being a woman, mother and partner in different contexts. Experiences from executing these roles stood out when analysing the influence on reflections and actions as a researcher.

Data and analysis

My analysis was inspired by Creswell’s ‘data analysis spiral’ (Creswell 2013) that includes organising the data described, reading and describing for classification, and finally, interpreting into themes, also called descriptive coding, where topics in the material are identified (Saldaña 2016, 102-105). I used techniques commonly known in ethnographic and narrative analysis (Cooper and Lilyea 2022, 201-203), as I looked for topics that stood out in the reading of my data, aiming for a timeline where I could see a process in my journey as a researcher, and looking for events and passages in my material that could be crucial for the experiences I had as a researcher. I also used analytical tools suggested by Chang (2008), looking for recurring topics, themes and patterns. I searched for cultural themes oriented to such polarities as being a hearing person or being deaf, where the implications of having the status of being a hearing person or of being a deaf person with regard to language and research are displayed. I also looked for the Norwegian context contrasted with the Indian context, where I contextualise my knowledge, actions and experiences as a Norwegian researcher in the Indian context. I identified exceptional occurrences, identifying and analysing the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, connecting the present with the past, analysing relationships between myself and others, and considering the context and comparing my data with existing literature and theory in the social sciences (Chang 2008, 132-137).

In the process, I worked through an abductive process, which Brinkmann (2014) and Swedberg (2014) describe as driven by wonder and a desire and need for understanding, resulting in a back-and-forth analysis engaged in reading and understanding the meaning of data. The findings presented here are an outcome of this analytical work. The notes that are displayed in the article are translated from Norwegian to English and are written out so the reader may understand the meaning of the content.

Deaf worlds resources – possibilities and limitations

In the initial stage of preparation for my fieldwork in India, I contacted persons in the networks of deaf people, as well as academics who had resources and suggestions for academic literature from India. I was introduced to a number of organisations for deaf people such as the National Association of the Deaf India, and the women’s section of the National Association of the Deaf in Delhi, the All India Federation of the Deaf and the organisation Deaf Enabled Foundation in Hyderabad. I also contacted the board of the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) in Delhi on the digital platform WhatsApp before I left for India. This platform made it possible to have conversations through a mixture of sign languages, Norwegian Sign Language, Indian Sign Language and International Sign together with English written sentences and sharing words on paper. Contacting academics who are deaf living in Norway, Scotland and the USA, as well as organisations of deaf people in India, resulted in narrowing my research to the city of Pune, where I stayed as a visiting scholar at an Indian University from January to March 2020. During that time, I had contact with several organisations of deaf people, and deaf women specifically, in the cities of Pune and Delhi. This chain of contact with academics who were deaf, and different organisations, led to finding an interpreter available in the city of Pune and encountering a variety of deaf groups in the city.

This networking could be known as Deaf Space in Deaf Studies, in which deaf persons seek other deaf people to socialise with in sign language, relying on mutual experiences based on being deaf (Solvang and Haualand 2014; Friedner and Kusters 2015). Deaf spaces are not dependent on geographical boundaries. They are dynamic, potentially elusive communities (Breivik, Haualand, and Solvang 2002). I had knowledge of deaf spaces through my own experiences and various conversations with deaf people from various parts of the world (Europe, North America and Latin America). Based on this knowledge, I developed a strategy to find deaf people in India in clubs and associations known to be spaces for deaf persons. In ‘Deaf on the Lifeline of Mumbai’, Kusters (2009) describes deaf people finding each other using the handicap compartments on the Mumbai subway lines. Her article affirmed my notion of junctions as a possible means to find deaf women to participate in my research. In Norway, deaf schools used to function as social, cultural and linguistic spaces for deaf persons (Solvang and Haualand 2014). Research from India showed deaf people with deaf networks in schools, course locations, organisations and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) for people with disabilities (Friedner 2014; Friedner and Kusters 2015; Kusters 2017; Zeshan 2015; Zeshan and Panda 2015). With this in mind, prior to my research stay in India, I sent emails to different organisations and deaf schools in India using addresses found on the internet.

Historical sources from Europe and the USA (Bauman 2008a; Breivik 2005) show that many deaf schools were oriented towards oral methods such as lipreading and learning to vocalise. These schools had limited knowledge of sign language and did not acknowledge sign language as a language offering a pedagogy and learning resources. In many cases, deaf schools were controlled by hearing people who regarded deaf people as needing to be helped and unable to make good decisions without the help and guidance of hearing people (Breivik 2005; Anjum and Jørgensen 2006; Bauman 2008b; Lane 2005). In conversations I had with Indian deaf people and ISL interpreters in India, before and during my research stay, they talked about experiences similar to those described here. During the recruiting process in Pune, I also experienced control by the board at a deaf school in the city, a board consisting of hearing people. I rented a hall at the school, and the leader of the board unexpectedly showed up and insisted on being present during the interviews, to watch how I organised and collected data from the deaf women. This deliberate or unconscious need for control by the staff at Indian schools could have become an obstacle for me when making contact with communities of deaf people in India.

Recruiting in different contexts

In this research project, the recruitment processes in the respective two countries differed considerably. In Norway, the Norwegian Deaf Association communicated to its members my invitation email to recruit informants. The email included both a written text and a video of me using Norwegian Sign Language. I also recruited from Facebook groups of persons who identify themselves as deaf or persons with hearing impairment, with a post in both written Norwegian and Norwegian Sign Language. In India, this strategy did not work. The National Association for the Deaf in India did not have a register of deaf members that could be invited to participate in the research project. As a means of getting in touch with deaf women in Pune, I was introduced to a group established in WhatsApp by an ISL interpreter who had contact with deaf people in Pune. The WhatsApp group was created with the goal of informing people about the research project and recruiting potential informants. I introduced myself in a video, using a mix of Norwegian Sign Language and International Sign. In addition to this, the ISL interpreter translated my message to Indian Sign Language. Many deaf Indian people are used to smartphones. Using WhatsApp with videos in ISL was a frequent practice in Pune and other cities in India. Sign language was preferred to written communication as not all deaf people were comfortable with written English, Marathi or Hindi.

The need for sensitivity on the part of the researcher

Prior to data collection in Pune, I was invited to meetings with deaf people, one of which solely comprised women. To help me navigate the huge city and to introduce me to the groups, deaf women met me at agreed meeting points. The first group meetings revealed a complex cultural context that needed to be addressed with sensitivity. Here is an illustration of this need for sensitivity from my fieldnotes:.

Participants at the meeting with over 50 deaf women: Two deaf women live with families who all are deaf persons. A third woman has no family at all and has meagre resources, according to the other meeting attendees. A fourth woman grew up in a family with only hearing members who do not know sign language. The father in her family is restrictive with regard to allowing her to go outside. A fifth woman who was organising the meeting explained to me that she urged the father of the fourth woman to let his deaf daughter go out and attend meetings with other deaf women. A sixth woman, the leader of the women’s group, talked a lot about support both to me and to all of the meeting attendees, underlining the importance of supporting other women. A seventh woman at the meeting told me that parents of deaf women refused to let them attend meetings and to meet others. (Fieldnotes from a meeting with a society for deaf women in Pune, January 2020.)

This illustration also addresses aspects of intersectionality, an issue for me from the start. In the talks with the deaf women topics related to the variety of epistemologies of deaf women as deaf, with emphasis on deaf culture and sign language, or as a deficit in hearing ability, were mixed with experiences of stigma both as deaf and as women in Indian society, and aspects of class and economic position (Friedner 2010; Ghai 2002; Addlakha 2008; Kayama, Johnstone, and Limaye 2021).

Finding a common deaf space – a matter of safe space

I presented myself as a researcher and as a deaf Norwegian woman and I expressed a curiosity to learn from the situations of deaf women in Pune. Here is another illustration from my fieldnotes of the need for sensitivity and finding a common deaf space:.

The deaf women sat on small chairs for children, paying careful attention to the speakers at the meeting. They asked me questions in sign language, and two women who were in charge of the meeting assisted me in translating the questions. ‘Do you have sign language in education in Norway?’. ‘How many deaf people are there in Norway?’. After the meeting there were photo sessions, and many women approached me to take selfies with me individually or in small groups of women. There was laughter, smiles and small talk in the yard. (Fieldnotes from a meeting with a society for deaf women in Pune, January 2020.)

My focus at the first meetings was on establishing a relationship that I thought might enable deaf women to understand the project and consent to participate, or not.

I discovered that there was variation among the women concerning what was ‘appropriate’ or what was conceived of as ‘secure and safe’. As I perceived it, this variation is closely related to a collective understanding of the matter among deaf women: the clubs for deaf women offered a communal space where women could ask questions and discuss them among themselves and with me. This influenced the recruitment strategy, as illustrated here:.

How to collect data: A communal meeting with all women together. The ISL interpreter thinks this will reassure the women; and in bigger groups there will be a greater probability that they will come and say something. This is different from Norway, where smaller groups may contribute to a greater probability that the members say something. (Fieldnotes written in Pune, January 2020.)

Nevertheless, when I invited one deaf woman to an office to answer the questionnaire, I experienced that she had concerns about other deaf people being present when she arrived. I took some time to talk with her about my duty of confidentiality and to assure her that I would make sure that she would not meet other deaf people. The question ‘Will I meet other deaf people’ also arose occasionally when I requested to meet deaf women. Some did not want to meet other deaf people when participating in the research, while others found it comfortable to attend if other deaf people were present. I understood this to be related to issues of trust, scepticism and fear of disclosure. This was especially important in situations where deaf Indian people might be learning about each other, giving rise to privacy issues in some cases and hidden agendas in others. Also, there were frequent talks between me and the deaf women I met about what this questionnaire was dealing with, and that there were no ‘correct’ answers, but that I wanted their personal perspectives and experiences. Here is an illustration from my reflection notes:.

Most of the deaf women I met in the data collection situations and in general during the stay in India were, I think, unsure about meeting me and thought they needed to give ‘correct’ answers. Science was not commonly known to multiple deaf persons in Pune. (Reflection note written in March 2020 in Norway.)

This is in line with what Young and Temple (2014) argue. That deaf people using sign language may be considered to be a collective community with common experiences of sign language, as well as dealing with cultural aspects as deaf people; and that research approaches should thus adapt to this knowledge. My research experience in India is that there is also a need to be particularly sensitive to how the deaf women participate in society, and how gender-based issues may influence their premises for participating (Ghai 2002; Addlakha 2008; Friedner 2010).

‘Exposed to the world or not’

During the meetings with deaf women, it became clear to me that deaf women experienced various conditions and had different backgrounds for acquiring information. Some women had been abroad and had been exposed to the world outside the city, while others had limited experience from outside their lives in the city. Some had limited opportunities to get education and information about the world outside the local community. Some were highly educated and well-informed about incidents within and outside India. As many of the deaf women were unfamiliar with the possible implications of participating in my research project, and also hesitated to participate, I spent a lot of time explaining which information was needed and why it was needed. I discussed how to explain the role of research and the potential gain for deaf people as a group with my Indian research assistants and ISL interpreters. For instance, I explained that the Indian work and education authorities, as well as people in general, could become more aware of the issues confronting deaf persons, and might understand how sign language could be a potential resource. Also, a few deaf Indian persons and ISL interpreters explained to me that an understanding of what research involved, and its importance, might depend on whether the deaf woman ‘had been exposed to the world or not’. When I asked what this meant, I was told that understanding and learning about society were connected to whether the woman had been allowed to go out or had to stay at home. Or had received an education and gained information about the world outside the home, where she could have an opportunity to learn about her conditions and opportunities in life. For the researcher, this emphasises the importance of making the research meaningful for the potential research participants, which might entail time-consuming and exhaustive explanations. The duty of confidentiality concerning the information received and participation in the project was one of the key issues I discussed with potential participants. The quality of information and the recruitment process could be closely linked with the trust these deaf women showed me. I spent my time and energy on finding appropriate spaces for my meetings with deaf women, and this was a challenging task. One facet was the distance to the meeting place, which could be an obstacle, and another was the women’s valuable time, which was often torn between their duties at home, their work, and time-consuming travel arrangements. The challenges the deaf women faced became clearer to me and needed to be dealt with in the light of recruitment of women to the project. For these reasons my data gathering plans were constantly adjusted and discarded; and earlier plans involving meetings in groups of up to fifty women were changed to plans for meetings with individuals and smaller groups.

Building relations takes time and flexibility

Through networking with people with access to clubs, groups and organisations with deaf persons, I managed to arrange data gathering meetings with translated questionnaires individually and in groups. I experienced that many deaf people in Pune were organised in different clubs and groups. I spent time becoming familiar with these clubs, which had different preferences and various focus areas for their groups. I chose to share personal information about myself, such as my family background, knowledge of sign language, and my marital status. This information provoked interest in some groups, while other groups were more interested in the history and context of deaf people in general in Norway, including questions about the availability and organisation of interpreters. Before I was invited to deaf clubs, I had doubts about whether I was spending my time well or not, but it turned out that my patience paid off, as I was eventually invited to meetings, gatherings and events.

Language issues also became apparent. English and the language of the state – Marathi – were familiar to some groups of deaf people, but not to others. One major challenge for my data collection in Pune was finding a common language for communication. I did not know Indian Sign Language or the local sign languages in the city. I also faced time limitations, and I had found it too difficult to go to India in advance to learn ISL, as there were several practical barriers, such as obtaining a visa to India, and difficulty in discovering where to contact deaf people in Pune at the start of my research project.

My attempts from Norway to contact deaf Indian people who were acquainted with people from the deaf community in Pune proved to be difficult, as many were occupied with work and domestic tasks and had limited time for meetings and calls. An additional difficulty was the difference in time zones between Norway and India. However, a visit to Pune or other Indian cities prior to the fieldwork with the aim of learning basic ISL and visiting sites where deaf persons might be present, such as deaf schools and organisations for deaf people, could have provided new opportunities. For instance, there might have been opportunities to establish cooperation with one or several deaf Indian women for interpreting and recruitment purposes. A deaf interpreter familiar with the local sign language and cultural codes could also have played a role as interlocutor for me as a researcher.

The complex data gathering situation appeared clearer to me as time went by. Friedner (2016) points to the aspect of understanding as a need and desire in deaf worlds. In the course of the fieldwork in Pune, this aspect became evident to me, as both the deaf women in Pune and I myself wanted and needed a common basis for understanding.

Discussion and conclusion

My autoethnographic analysis points to themes such as the influence of different positions in the contexts of the Global North and Global South, including such topics as economic background, an understanding of what being deaf means, and the status of minorities. Furthermore, the language differences, combined with the variety of experiences the deaf women had, presented different issues to be dealt with. This challenged me as a researcher in my work and my relationship with the field in India. It challenged me to be aware of my privileged position as a white, highly educated Norwegian woman with access to sign language interpreters. I experienced a journey where I gradually discovered several aspects of the dynamics in the Indian context, capturing the nuances and learning to adapt my interactions with the deaf women, and the research field. Through the analysis I could see my journey develop in many ways. I unveiled the importance of my personal background with sign language and knowledge gained from previous stays in foreign contexts, such as the Caribbean, in my reflection processes and actions as a researcher. However, I can see how important it is to be open to new knowledge and to be curious, by showing humility and care. Acknowledging the resources deaf women in India possess, I became acquainted with their experiences. Doing so required a critical reflective practice on my part in the fieldwork as a deaf, female researcher from Norway.

The process of data gathering in India was multi-layered for me as a deaf Norwegian researcher. There were several significant issues to be dealt with. One demanding issue was the challenge of how to attain a common language while using multiple languages within the project. Performing an autoethnographic analysis revealed a pattern of how this turned into a blind spot for me, and especially concerning how to deal with interpreting issues I was confronted by an unknown setting. Alternatives could be attempted, for example by including a deaf Indian interpreter or a deaf research assistant to assist me in dealing with issues of language and understanding, or in revising the research design.

Building relationships in research is a common theme when conducting research with human beings, as in the case of this project. Deaf space is one resource to take into consideration when networking is crucial, but this is not always enough. The context also plays a role in how, where and when to interact with deaf persons. Being a deaf woman with knowledge of sign language played a vital role in gaining access to the gatherings of deaf women. I experienced the representation of being deaf and a woman as important when I made contact with, and in my conversations with, deaf women. The position of a male, hearing researcher might have had different implications and outcomes in a similar project. However, as the findings do display, the aspect of being a female deaf researcher from the Global North is important to consider, and the findings underline the importance of performing a critical reflexive process as a researcher. The issues presented in this article must be taken into consideration and carefully dealt with in further research, whether the researchers are deaf or not.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Hilde Haualand, Professor Marianne Hedlund and Professor Sigrid Slettebakk Berge for their invaluable guidance and feedback throughout the process of writing this article. Also, I would like to thank Professor Erika Gubrium and Associate Professor Hilde Fiva Buzungu for comments and discussion of the material. Thank you to Associate Professor Aarti Nagarkar for help during the research stay in Pune city, and to Atiya Hajee for invaluable help at the start of the research period in India. Most of all, I sincerely thank all the deaf women in India who shared their knowledge and experience with me. Informed consent was provided by informants.

Disclosure statement

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