Skinfolk, not kinfolk: Comparative reflections on the identity of participant-observation in two field situations

Thinking back about the process of becoming a fieldworker, a participant-observer, within and across different field experiences, raises for me a range of questions about shifting aspects of identity and their combined and differential relations to what Jan Pouwer (1973) has called the “translation of the translator” in fieldwork signification. Thinking through the place of race, class, and gender as shifting aspects of identity during fieldwork raises further questions about the meaning of these concepts for and to the participant-observer, when such concepts are themselves continually being constructed and reconstructed by those who are translating the translator.