This paper is the result of my reflection on fieldwork in the European Hmong community when I stayed with the same family that at least three ethnographers have been with. A rich literature on reflexive ethnography has appeared since the 1980s. Holmes and Marcus (2008) prompted that collaboration should be central to re-function ethnography as a subject’s mode of knowing. Through rich discussions, reflexivity promotes a route in qualitative research as a norm of fieldwork. Yet, despite these inspirations, there is a need for further discussion on the relationships of ethnographer-subject because in this supper-connected and mobilized era, the relationships were shaped differently from the past.
This paper provides a discussion of positionality and vision in the ethnographer-subject relationship. On contrary to early reflections on in/outsiderness, the argument is three-threshold. First, the synchronicity of material and conceptual realms the researched and researchers lived claims the necessity of “tensionless ethnography” (Friberg, 2019). Second, the variety of multiple roles affirms the relationship could shift from stangerness to kinship that careship connects researched and researchers. Third, the life course approach could provide a strategy to cope with the issue of temporality in the process of conducting fieldwork and the afterlife of participant observation in the non-parallel worlds of the researched community and academia.
