Disability Research and the “Researcher Template”: Reflections on Grounded Subjectivity in Ethnographic Research

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Abstract
This article examines methodological and analytical issues emerging from an ethnographic study of self-advocacy groups of people with learning difficulties.1 Running in parallel to this research2 was the author’s involvement as a volunteer supporter to a self-advocacy group. This article explores how these two experiences connected to create a “researcher template.” This template provided a working subjective framework through which to control, temper, assess, and check observations and analyses while inviting a consideration of the dialectical interplay between epistemology, methodology, and analysis. Four points are considered: (a) the grounding of researcher subjectivity in relation to “knowing” research participants, (b) the impact of the author’s volunteer role on his subjectivity during ethnography, (c) the dilemmas of participating in people’s lives, and (d) the relationships between ethnography and participatory and emancipatory disability research. It concludes that explicitly rendering a researcher’s subjectivity open to critical revision feeds into the development of critical reflexivity within disability research.

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