Читать книгу Rural Women in Leadership - Lori Ann McVay - Страница 32

Fundamental to my attempt to ‘capture … social meanings and ordinary activities’ as a way of deciphering how the women in this study make sense of their leadership circumstances (Brewer, 2000) was the practice of conducting participant observation at meetings in which they interacted with other women leaders from rural areas. Rural research has commonly made use of this method (Hughes et al., 2000), and it has been described by LeCompte (2002) as an instrument for understanding broader cultural frameworks without masking differences among participants. Although it did not involve complete immersion into a field setting, early in the research I began attending meetings as a way of gaining acceptance among the women I studied (Brewer, 2000). This led to the recognition that their lives are quite complex and multi-dimensional – shaped by much more than simply their status and duties as leaders (Hughes et al., 2000). It also informed my understandings of the role these organizations play in rural life and provided deeper insights into the participants’ lives when they spoke about the organizations.

Particular attention must be paid to how much participation was appropriate to the setting (Buch and Staller, 2007). Wolf (1996) observes that research would not be undertaken if there were not existing differences between the researcher and the researched. Even in instances where the researcher shares some ‘insider characteristics’ with those being studied, it ‘is not enough to ensure that the researcher can fully capture the lived experiences of those he or she researches’ (Hesse-Biber, 2007, p. 141). Bourdieu (2003) attributes this to the foreignness of the researched group’s formative practices and experiences as opposed to those of the researcher. While claims have been made for the advantages of both insider and outsider statuses (Wolf, 1996), much feminist research considers insider/outsider status as fluid (Lal, 1996) or, alternatively, views the researcher as both insider and outsider concurrently (Wolf, 1996). McAreavey’s (2008) work gives further insight into the complexities of the researcher’s overlapping insider/outsider status through recognizing the continuous internal dialogue required to maintain both. This blurring of insider/outsider status was relevant to a point here, where my status as both an insider (daughter of a rural farm family) and an outsider (academic and native of the USA) informed my choices regarding participation.