Recursos hipermedia en Cartas desde Cuba 42

Throughout my time both collecting data and analysing them, I always had the quote by Back and Ware in mind, as finding the balance between what was said and what the researcher sees and interprets as the truth was always difficult:

Ethnographers are like tricksters who promise not to lie, but on the other hand never tell the whole truth. […] their rhetoric of absolute truth both empowers and subverts the message (2002: 41).

Doing an ethnographic case study, it is difficult to know where the boundaries of the research lie. It can be difficult to realise when the participants tell you stories because they see you as one of them, or as part of answering formal questions. How these differences are perceived is mainly to do with the location and the structural position that we occupy within them (McCorkel & Meyers, 2003). I felt that pupils were always very keen to talk to me, polite and enthusiastic when it came to answering questions. Some of them showed a keen interest and would stay even after the interview had finished to ask more questions about my project, or for advice for their prospective university studies. Often, however, I felt that a lot of them were only answering my questions and were agreeing to spend an hour of their free time doing an interview with me because I was in a position of power. They knew that my main contact at the school was Mr Jones, the Second Master. They had seen me walk in the corridors with him, he had called them into his office to tell them that they should probably agree to do this, we had walked into classrooms together, while they were having a lesson, to ask students to come out and meet me. Therefore, most of them probably realised that it would be to their best interest to cooperate, if they did not want to be perceived negatively by Mr Jones. I had to establish a different

position, one that would not make my research look as a formal interview process, and this is why I negotiated with Mr Jones and changed the way that I would ask for pupils to participate. It was mostly through my contact with them rather than his gentle coercion.

On the other hand, however, I was also surprised to see how these positions of power were working in a different manner from the one I had guessed. I was surprised to see how confident the pupils felt talking to an adult and how they were able to talk to me as their equal. I quickly realised that this confidence was the direct result of private education, one I did not have myself, and the attributes such schools encourage and develop in students. Despite doing a PhD, at times I felt like an imposter both with regards to my academic qualifications and my social positioning. English is not my first language and I have an accent; the pupils and senior staff on the other hand, were all erudite to say the least. Also, being a migrant myself (despite one from a former white colony) made me feel uncomfortable when people were talking about all the immigrants coming to the country and seeking work. I was one of these ‘immigrants’; I had come to study and decided to stay. Was I one of the people who were draining the resources of the public service then, as depicted in the media? In chapter on Race I analyse they viewed me as a different kind of immigrant, perhaps the ‘good’ kind. Also, even though I lived in the area that I studied, and people might have assumed that I had the same financial background, I lived in the same flat for four years and have been lucky not to have a rent increase in all these years. Therefore, a lot of the times I was quite shocked by the lifestyle choices of the pupils and their families; and even felt resentment towards the spending of money in such a way.

When discussing ethnography and reflexivity it is difficult not to talk about emotions and how they developed while in the field. To strip any qualitative research off all emotion is almost impossible. By embedding one’s self to the field, emotions can become overwhelming. When conducting an

ethnographic case study project, it is almost impossible not to develop likes, dislikes or friendships with participants. While trying to maintain a professional relationship and maintain the role of the impersonal researcher, I realised it was often difficult to maintain this balance. I was trying to immerse myself in the setting but at the same time I did not want personal relationships to interfere with what I was doing at the field. Before going to the field, I was negatively prejudiced about how the pupils’ habitus and their socioeconomic position would affect their personality.

Admittedly as I spent more time at the field, I came to realise that a lot of their views at times represented mine – perhaps as I became more close to my participants I became more sympathetic to their everydayness. Khan (2011: 198), who studied St Paul’s, one of the most elite schools in the US, observed that:

‘[a]s the languages of race, gender, and class are increasingly framed as academic liberal pandering or as old social categories whose usefulness has run their course, students begin to lose the tools to make sense of their experience, and challenging durable inequalities becomes more and more difficult. Not only does the success of some become naturalized, but the failure of others becomes internalized’.

As I was reading through my data and was deciding what themes were prominent in my observations and interviews, I came to realise that I had become neutral to some of the views my participants were expressing; I could almost see their point of view. Jeremy was probably the one pupil whose views were most in opposition to mine; the first time I talked to him I was almost grimacing when he was expressing some views. As weeks went by, however, I could see ‘where he was coming from’.

Towards the end, I felt increasingly torn between my need to be perceived as critical of their privilege and my own personhood as someone who

did not want to seem that I was criticizing the people who shared their opinions with me. I am not sure whether this was because I felt that our similarities were more than our differences – I lived in the total locality I was describing after all – or because I genuinely did not want to be ungrateful. While trying to make sense of it all, it occurred to me that being an insider was beneficial and perhaps the debatable position I occupied was what allowed me to reflect more critically on some of the data.

In retrospect, this study had an emotional impact but there were also practical issues which needed to be addressed. Spending so many hours at the school was physically exhausting. It was not only the fact that I had to be physically present in different classes, or trying to see things which I did not know if they were there or not. There was also the fact that all of the pupils were under 18. Therefore, I had to do a DBS check and then gave out a document outlining my work to the students, which they could pass on to their parents and if they had any questions or they wanted their child to withdraw they could do so immediately. Mr Jones and I also contacted the Head of the Parents’ Association and asked him if he believed that the project would make parents worried about their children’s progress. None of the parents, nor pupils expressed any concerns or asked not to participate.

Admittedly, even though the participants had signed a consent form it was always difficult to ensure that what they had signed was still what was happening in the field. As Etherington (2007) points out it is difficult to expect participants to give informed consent and know exactly what it is they are agreeing to. The researcher will give broad information about what the intentions of the research are but, but most processes are yet to unfold. A lot of the questions and purposes shape as the research progresses. When drafting a research proposal, without having been in the field, it is difficult to predict what path the study will take. The interactions and intersubjectivities between the researcher and the participants change continually and are very much context

specific – the context in itself being volatile and shaped by wider social, political, and economic events. To try and ameliorate this, all the participants were given the opportunity to withdraw from the research at any point, but before the data was transcribed which was over the summer of 2016. The most important consideration was ensuring that the reputation of the school would not be harmed in any way and therefore, all participants had been given pseudonyms and there has been considerate amount of effort in making sure that readers will not be able to identify the school from references in the data.

Another consideration was the fact that a lot of the people who gave their voice in the study did not sign a form of consent as I described events which happened in the street, at Open Days, etc. I always mentioned I was doing a PhD to those I interacted with and I explained what my study was about. Again, I tried to ensure anonymity and I believe I treat a lot of the events and responses as representative of wider attitudes I believe exist. Therefore, I do not attribute specific ideas to specific people as such. The incident on the bus, for example, is something to my opinion, could have been instigated by a different white, middle-class woman. I still remain aware and conscious of the fact that these people did not agree to be portrayed in this study; however, I believe that it would be almost impossible to have a deeper understanding of my participants, had I not observed the wider locality and broader social occurrences.