387

22
Not Just Finding What You (Thought You)
Were Looking For
Refections on Fieldwork Data and Theory
Cai Wilkinson
Sitting in a bath with the (clothed) young woman who was attempting to interview him as part of
a 1984 documentary about the band New Order, Manchester music mogul Tony Wilson dened
praxis as the idea that you do something because you want to do it, and after youve done it,
you nd out all the reasons why you did it, going on to note that all those thing that I might
say are the reasons, Ive only found out that they were the reasons for doing it by doing it. . . . I
can think of great reasons afterwards, but itd be dishonest. As a working academic denition of
praxis, this explanation leaves more than a little to be desired. As a description of my experiences
of academia both as a student and a scholar, however, it feels almost uncomfortably accurate;
much like the experience of eldwork I describe in this chapter, my academic career to date
owes as much to serendipitous encounters, the generosity of many people, decisions taken on the
basis of gut instinct, and being in the right (or possibly wrong) place at the right time as it has to
any conscious long-term plan.
I originally gained a place at university to read for a BA in geography and Russian, but only
four weeks into my rst term decided to drop geography in order to focus on Russian and take the
full range of language, literature, and Russian studies courses offered by the program. A chance
meeting during my second year led to my taking an intercalated year studying Russian philology
at the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in the middle of my degree. I
spent the rst four months of my time in Kyrgyzstans capital in a state of profound culture shock,
but determined to last it out and make the most of the opportunity. Few things were what they
initially seemed to be, and trying to gure out how things and people worked was an ongoing
and frequently exhausting challenge, especially given that I had quickly discovered that my spoken
Russian language skills were not up to scratch for correctly reporting the time when asked (given
the complexity of Russian grammar, this is perhaps not as bad as it sounds), let alone studying
subjects such as phonology and Russian folklore.
With hindsight, this nine-month immersion in Kyrgyzstan gave me an intense apprenticeship in
the processes of individual and collective sense making which has since proven invaluable both
personally and academically. However, when deciding on a topic for a PhD proposal as part of a
funding application in my nal year of undergraduate studies, I concluded that the international
relations subdiscipline of security studies, and specically the so-called Copenhagen School theory,
was the best choice of a way to study societal security in Kyrgyzstan. From a strategic perspective
this was not unwise; coming only two years after 9/11, a research proposal that focused on the
388 ANALYZING DATA
newly rediscovered Central Asian region and talked about security and identity ticked plenty of
boxes for the funding council.
Yet, as this chapter demonstrates, despite my zealous intentions to become a proper scholar
of international relations (by which I had in mind someone who uses theories in a scientic way
to conduct research, in contrast to the atheoretical, empirical cabbage counting of Russian and
East European studies), things did not exactly turn out as planned. Starting with the overthrow of
the Kyrgyzstani president in March 2005 and continuing throughout my eldwork, reality stubbornly
interfered with my attempts to impose theory on what I was observing and experiencing, and I
muddled my way reluctantly through it. Having nished my eldwork in June 2006, I returned to
Birmingham [UK] via the ECPR [European Consortium for Political Research] Summer School
in Methods and Techniques in Ljubljana [Slovenia].
It was during the two-week course on interpretive methods that things began to fall into place.
This was not in a nice, gentle, ah, so this is how it works sense, but rather an angsty and unnerv-
ing realization that theory not necessarily being the sharp and incisive tool Id thought it would
be was the least of my problems. There was a far bigger issue to address: how to write accounts
of research which would be meaningful and humanistic in the face of disciplinary conventions
and the hierarchies of knowledgeand by extension, powerthat they (re)produce. Since then,
exploring the notion of writing meaningfully while remaining theoretically engaged has been an
ongoing project and has resulted in a variety of papers and chapters on researcher positionality
and interpretive methods. While my exploration is still very much a work in progress, this chapter
represents the latest iteration of my reections on the process of getting from the eld to the page
without having to choose between theory and the realities of the eld.
* * *
Because we were constantly held in check by people with much deeper expertise than
ours about the regions, the most important learning experience for us was in the tension
between, on the one hand, our initial ideas about how the empirical material might
be decanted into our containers, and, on the other, our growing understanding of the
specicity and uniqueness of each individual region.
Barry Buzan and Ole Wver (2006, 443)
Reading the above quotation a few months after returning from the second of two periods of
eldwork in Kyrgyzstan, I was immediately struck by the metaphor of decanting empirical
material into theoretical containers. It pointed to a central issue with which I had been struggling
since the start of my research: how to combine theoretical and empirical perspectives in a way that
is meaningful for both and which does not automatically privilege expert forms of knowledge,
such as theorizing, at the expense of situated and experiential ones.
For Buzan and Wvers research, which involved using regional security complex theory
(RSCT) to map regional patterns of international security, the solution was to produce a set of
regional case studies that are underpinned by the same set of questions, but whose main plots and
themes differ markedly in order to balance the presentation of an analytical framework systematic
enough to allow for signicant crossregional comparison, and the distinctiveness of each regional
story (Buzan and Wver 2006, 443). Crucial to the success of this solution, however, was that
the empirical material on which researchers case studies were based was already in a form that
was suitable for decanting into a theoretical container. The data had already been processed into
analytical articles, chapters, papers, and memos before being used in the study, as demonstrated
NOT JUST FINDING WHAT YOU (THOUGHT YOU) WERE LOOKING FOR 389
by the published bibliography. As such, while the material was empirical in terms of being about
actual places, events, practices, and phenomena, it had already been ltered to clean up the mess
of sociopolitical realities as these are experienced, transforming it into expert knowledge that
could be easily poured into the authors theoretical container with minimal spillage.
The notion of decanting empirical data into a theoretical container seemed especially prob-
lematic in relation to eldwork-based research. Rather than a simple and elegant action of smoothly
pouring free-owing data from one container to another, the metaphor brought to mind a quasi-
industrial process of carefully cleaning up my eldwork data to meet disciplinary standards for
purity (n facts per one thousand parts and no more than one percent context), so that these now-
standardized data could be poured neatly into conceptual containers (in this case, of securitization
theory and societal security), any residues discarded and splatters wiped up before the nished
product would be presented for testing against international relations industry standards.
Yet the empirical material I had brought back from Kyrgyzstan was sprawling, sticky, lumpy,
impure, and distinctly rough around the edgesnot a substance that could be easily handled, let
alone neatly decanted into the stringently delimited and sterile connes of a theoretical frame-
work. Furthermore, even if I did manage to process the raw material into decantable form, the
process underlying the metaphoric image seemed akin to taking a ne, locally made, artisanal
wine and turning it into a generic, mass-produced, standard-strength, table wine: the richness of
the eld and its materials and the importance of provenance would have to be at least partially
sacriced through the specicities of the production process in order to ensure that the material
was compatible with the intended theoretical container and would sell to the target market. The
end result of such a process of decanting would be a triumph of theoretical packaging over em-
pirical substancean ersatz version of Kyrgyzstani security that conformed to the tastes of the
academic consumer, but which was largely unrecognizable to people in Kyrgyzstan; and this was
exactly what I had set out to avoid.
How then to proceed? As I looked more deeply at Buzan and Wvers metaphor, it seemed that
there were many unanswered questions about what exactly was involved in decanting empiri-
cal material into a theoretical container: How should the material be prepared, and what are the
key stages in the process of getting from raw eld data to a potentially publishable, theoretically
engaged manuscript? What should be done with the by-products and mess of the process? What
tools and containers should be used? Who should undertake the decanting and what instructions
should be provided? How should the container be labeled and what product information and serv-
ing suggestions should be included? And, nally, how should the nal product look and taste?
Buzan and Wver do not use the metaphor self-consciouslyit appears once and once only.
Nevertheless, it provides a starting point for thinking about the relationship between theory and
eld data, although the simplicity it implies is, I suggest, part of the problem, as it focuses only on
one particular aspect of the research process. In this chapter I reect on these questions, drawing
on my experiences of taking one theoretical containersecuritization theoryto a specic eld
setting and the problems that I encountered at different stages of my research project in trying
to work out how to t eld data and theory together in order to create a nal meaningful written
account of security in Kyrgyzstan.
FIELD-BASED RESEARCH: LEGWORK, FIELDWORK,
AND DESKWORK
My understanding of the relationships and tensions between theory and empirical material shifted
considerably over the course of the research that I describe in this chapter. Broadly speaking, these
390 ANALYZING DATA
shifts coincided with the three main phases of eldwork-based research: the legwork of prepara-
tion (Wilkinson 2012b), the eldwork itself during which data are generated, and the deskwork
and textwork of writing up ones interpretations and nal research account (Yanow 2009a, 279).
I have organized my reections around these main stages. Prior to starting my eldwork, I saw
the tensions as resulting from an epistemological culture clash between a European theory and
a Central Asian reality. In other words, how could a theory of security developed in response to
European sociopolitical realities successfully travel to locations with very different realities? My
eldwork, therefore, would be a matter of going to Kyrgyzstan, selecting appropriate empirical
material, decanting it into the container of securitization theory to test the containers robustness,
and then revising the design of the container accordingly to x the limitations that had been
revealed. The result, I presumed, would be a theoretical container or framework with enhanced
material properties, now able to contain Kyrgyzstani security as well as European varieties ef-
fectively. However, having arrived in Bishkek to start the rst of two eldwork periods, I rapidly
became aware that there was a far more fundamental problem with securitization theory: now that
I was in the eld, I found that as a container for a meaningful study of security in Kyrgyzstan, the
theory was far too small and inexible, creating a dilemma about how to proceed with eldwork,
as I discuss in the latter part of this section.
Moving into the eldwork phase proper, I describe my attempts to cope with the apparent in-
compatibility between what I was observing and hearing in Kyrgyzstan and the theoretical approach
that I had intended to apply. Faced with needing to nd a workable solution so that my relatively
limited time in Bishkek was not wasted (and my research project not completely derailed), I set
about using a range of interpretive ethnographic methods to generate data that could be used to
create a thick description of the situation in the eld. Central to this endeavor was consciously
choosing to temporarily neglect securitization theory while in the eld in order to focus on
making sense of events that I was experiencing during my daily activitiesa decision that caused
me no small anxiety due to the seeming inexplicability of the hunches that were guiding me. In
addition to documenting my own observations and interpretations, I also tried to access a range
of local perspectives on security through interviews and local Russophone print media
1
to ensure
that the description was as thick as possible. No less importantly, I tried to problematize and, by
extension, decenter the a priori knowledge provided by the scholarly literature on both securitiza-
tion theory and security in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia more broadly.
While this strategy was effective as a way of engaging with eldwork, it presented additional
challenges at the deskwork and textwork stage that threw the problematic nature of the metaphor
of decanting empirical material into conceptual containers into sharp relief. On a practical level,
as noted earlier, my mass of eldwork data was not of a form that could be simply decanted into
securitization theory post hoc. The aim of writing up my eldwork in a way that was meaning-
ful; that is, so that it reected the experiences and interpretations of the people with whom I had
interacted in Kyrgyzstan, as well as my own, rather than merely conforming to the interpretation
offered by securitization theorymeant that subjecting the material to the various traditional
standardization and purication processes of academic writing which would transform it into
decantable data was unacceptable.
My sense of the unacceptability of rendering down the data into decantable form was not simply
a personal reaction to the idea of needing to reduce the thickness of my description to what the
theorizing in my research project would have required (although the realization that a particularly
intriguing quotation or really interesting statistic must be set aside as irrelevant is never a happy
one). Rather, it was the fact that the disciplinary norms of decanting and the pursuit of objec-
tivity demanded that the nal account be presented as separate from and uncontaminated by
NOT JUST FINDING WHAT YOU (THOUGHT YOU) WERE LOOKING FOR 391
the embodied processes of generation and interpretation from which it had been created. Having
experienced the limitations of securitization theory in Kyrgyzstan, to divorce the result from the
process seemed completely counterintuitive. To return to the decanting analogy, I would not just
be decanting evidentiary material into a theoretical container: I would be neglecting to provide a
label listing the ingredients, place and date of manufacture, and directions for use. In other words,
all the contextual information about the data production process that the consumer needed to
understand the nal product and use it appropriately would be missing.
My solution, which I discuss in the penultimate section of the chapter, was to extend the exercise
of writing myself into my eldwork account, via a consideration of positionality and reexivity,
in a way that enabled me to write securitization theory back in, as well. Now, rather than solely
being a container or framework that structured and auto-selected empirical content, the theory
became a guide and reference point that I could use during deskwork and textwork, but which
was not denitive. The result was that securitization theory took its place among other ways of
interpreting security, all of which could then be included in the thick descriptionthe labeling
of the settings, actors, events, and so on which both produced and contextualized the evidentiary
material that became the basis for understanding and explaining security in Kyrgyzstan.
This repositioning of theory fundamentally reconceptualizes the relationship between it and
the empirical realities of the eld by revealing the situated and partial nature of the theorys in-
terpretation of the problem under investigation, in this case, securitization theorys interpretation
of security and its meaning(s). It also highlights the dual role of the researcher in creating her
research account, which combines being both a source of primary data and a sense maker seeking
to understand and explain multiple and often conicting interpretations. I suggest that this dual role
necessitates the development of epistemological as well as personal reexivity beyond a statement
of positionality. This enhanced reexivity would ensure the successful navigation of the tensions
between multiple forms of knowledge and the politics and practices that accompany them. To
achieve this, researchers can draw upon their own critical sensibilities. The resultant combination
of personal reexivity with epistemological reexivity offers a way to generate new empirical and
theoretical insights into the subject of studyhere, the construction of securityby no longer
automatically privileging expert forms of knowledge over local accounts. Such an enhanced
reexivity, I conclude, offers a way to manage the problems of combining forms of knowledge
that have by convention been kept separate and to move beyond the automatic prioritization of
expert forms of knowledge, such as theory.
LEGWORK: PREPARING TO TAKE THEORY TO THE FIELD
I use legwork to describe all the processes that are involved in developing a research project from
the initial idea or question into a plan of action for how one intends to actually do the research.
The decision to undertake eldwork of some sort is usually taken in the early stages of develop-
ing a research project when one begins to consider how to generate whatever data are thought to
be necessary. The decision may be driven by disciplinary convention, by practical considerations
such as eldwork being the only viable way to access data (Bayard de Volo and Schatz 2004, 269),
and/or by personal preferences, and it fundamentally shapes the legwork stage. Not only must the
prospective eld researcher undertake the conventional academic activities leading to the develop-
ment of the literature review, along with whatever methods training is deemed necessary by ofcial
course requirements,
2
but she must also address the logistics of eldwork: where and when is the
eldwork going to be undertaken, how is the researcher going to get there, what is she going to do
while there in order to generate the required data, and what resources will she need to do it?
392 ANALYZING DATA
The starting point for my research project had been encountering securitization theory and the
concept of societal security during a course on Soviet and post-Soviet defense policies which I
took in the nal year of my undergraduate degree in Russian studies. Developed by the so-called
Copenhagen School (McSweeney 1996) and presented most comprehensively in Security: A New
Framework for Analysis by Buzan, Wver, and de Wilde (1998), securitization theory presents a
conceptualization of security as a speech act in which an actor presents a narrative of something
or someone posing an existential threat to something that is worth protecting, even if this means
using extraordinary measures not sanctioned by normal politics (Buzan, Wver, and de Wilde
1998, 2326). The issue becomes a security matter if the target audience accepts the narrative,
resulting in the issue being framed either as a special kind of politics or as above politics,
meaning that it is no longer subject to the established rules of the game (23). The attraction of
this conceptualization of security for me was that security is understood as being inherently in-
tersubjectively constructed. This means that in the right circumstances, any issue can be a matter
of security, eliminating predened limits on what does or does not count as security; rather, it is
a political choice to dene something as a matter of security. In principle, therefore, securitiza-
tion theory promised to live up to its billing as a theory that offered a tool for practical security
analysis (Taureck 2006, 53).
This practicality seemed to be especially the case when securitization theory was viewed in
conjunction with the concept of societal security, which species a range of particular collective
identities as the potential referent object of the security speech act (i.e., a collective entity that is
threatened by something). Not all collective identities are societal identities, however. Rather, they
are specic identities that can generate sufcient we-feeling to carry the loyalties and devotion
of subjects in a form and to a degree that can create a socially powerful argument that this we
is threatened . . . as to its identity (Buzan, Wver, and de Wilde 1998, 123; original emphasis).
The authors identify the most important societal identities in the contemporary world as being
tribes, clans, nations (and nation-like ethnic units, which others call minorities), civilizations,
religions and race (Buzan, Wver, and de Wilde 1998, 123).
In combination, securitization theory and the concept of societal security offered a framework
that in principle could be used to facilitate the examination of security claims made in the name
of particular identity communities, and I began wondering what it would reveal about societal
security in Kyrgyzstan, a post-Soviet republic known for its ethnic diversity in a region often
portrayed as unstable and with high conict potential. This line of thought was not random: a
couple of years earlier I had spent an academic year in Kyrgyzstans capital, Bishkek, studying
Russian philology as a guest student at the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University. In addition to being
a crash course in Russian language and linguistics, my time in the republic was a crash course in
sense making as I grappled with major culture shock and learned how things worked in practice,
which was often completely different from how local people whom I asked initially told me things
worked.
3
Reading through the section on societal security dynamics in the former Soviet Union in
the Buzan, Wver, and de Wilde book, I was reminded of this earlier experience. I found myself
unconvinced and frustrated by the analysis presented, which did not match what I had experienced
and seemed to present Central Asia as an area of particular danger and volatility.
4
At this point,
however, I could not fully explain the mismatch. Further investigation was required, and thus my
research project began to develop.
Based in an area studies department, my research was intended from the outset to involve
eldwork, since area studies claim to possess exclusive, grounded, empirical knowledge about
macrolevel phenomena, such as politics in the region of study, has traditionally been central to its
positioning in relation to other social science disciplines, especially in the case of Soviet studies.
5

NOT JUST FINDING WHAT YOU (THOUGHT YOU) WERE LOOKING FOR 393
Yet despite the emphasis on empirical knowledge and the importance of the researchers possessing
a high degree of cultural and linguistic competence, discussions of eldwork focused primarily on
the logistical practicalities of accessing the eld in terms of securing local institutional support,
making accommodation arrangements, and nding potential contacts. The importance of thorough
planning, in my case, was highlighted by the fact that circumstances in Kyrgyzstan had changed
signicantly since I had formally started my research project, with the overthrow of the govern-
ment in March 2005 and ongoing sociopolitical unrest. This turn of events inevitably meant that
while my plan to commence eldwork in September of that same year remained in place, it was
now contingent on the situation being deemed safe enough to do so.
6
In the meantime, I continued to explore the literature on the Copenhagen School and think
about how it wouldor would notwork in the case of Kyrgyzstan. I was certainly aware that
the concepts of securitization and societal security were not unproblematica fact to which the
extensive critiques of the Copenhagen Schools conceptualization of security, from a wide range
of angles, was testament (Huysmans 1998; M. McDonald 2008). However, most of the critiques
focused on epistemological issues and did not consider questions of method, including my own
contribution, which diagnosed the problem as being the Eurocentric nature of the theorys assump-
tions about sociopolitical dynamics (Wilkinson 2007). The challenge, therefore, as I understood
it at that point, was working out how to remedy the shortcomings of the theory in order to make
sure it was able to contain both Western and non-Western empirical material effectively.
A consequence of this understanding of the relationship between theory and empirical material
and my goal of producing an enhanced theoretical framework that would have greater explanatory
power was that I viewed eldwork primarily as an exercise in collecting the required dataan
instrumentalist understanding that in no small part reected the continuing dominance of positivist
epistemologies in mainstream political science and international relations (Wedeen 2010, 255).
Once in Kyrgyzstan, I assumed, I would use the framework provided by securitization theory and
societal security to identify the required materials, collect them in standard generic formats using
standard methods, and bring them back to be neatly poured into the framework. The navet of
this assumption is immediately apparent to anyone who has actually done eldwork and found
that the process of deploying even the most standard data collection method is often far from
straightforward in practice, with the mess of the social world (Law 2004) frequently proving a
worthy opponent for both theory and methodas I was about to experience rsthand.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS AND A THEORETICAL PROBLEM
Once I had arrived in Bishkek, it rapidly became apparent that I needed to rethink my research plans
to accommodate local conditions. This was not unexpected in light of the sociopolitical upheaval
that had been occurring in the republic since early 2005 and was still ongoing in the aftermath
of the Tulip Revolution, as it had been dubbed by its supporters and the Western media. In this
respect I had anticipated that I would need some time to reacquaint myself with Bishkek and
tune in again, having been away for ve years, but I had not foreseen the extent to which I would
need to reappraise my existing understandings of the sociopolitical context. Given the relatively
limited amount of time I had to spend in the eld due to funding requirements, the reality that
nding my feet was going to take longer than I had anticipated was unwelcome, although it was
not an insurmountable problem.
7
In addition, slowing down gave me a little time to consider a more fundamental problem that
I had realized I was facing: to invert Buzan and Wvers metaphor, how was I going to decant
the theoretical matter into the empirical container? Concerns discussed in the theoretical literature
394 ANALYZING DATA
as largely abstract epistemological issues about the privileging of the public voice over other
forms of expression, the reication of identities, the inherently retrospective and outcome-oriented
nature of securitization, and the role of the analyst were made more immediate, the implications
and consequences more clear. More worrying, from my perspective, was the sense that if I used
securitization theory as a guide to help me identify what I was looking for in the eld, I would
only nd expressions of security that were fully compatible with the container of securitization
theory, rather than capturing as full a range as possible of the diverse, fragmented, uid, and
often contradictory security dynamics that were becoming evident during my eld research in
Kyrgyzstan.
This realization in particular left me feeling very uncertain about how to proceed with my
eldwork. It pointed to the fact that there was a fundamental decision to be taken: either to allow
the theory to take precedence, despite recognizing that it would lter out many of the processes
and interlinkages that were present in the multiple (and multiplying) narratives of security of
which I was becoming aware in Bishkek, or to concentrate on building a more comprehensiveand
therefore beyond the container of securitization theorypicture of security in Kyrgyzstan and
how people related it to their lives, identities, and communities, and worry about the theory later.
Pursuing the former approach would potentially produce a rigorous microlevel empirical applica-
tion and critique of securitization theory of the sort that Buzan and Wver acknowledge would be
benecial to the further development of their research agenda (2006, 74). Yet I did not feel that
it would be meaningful in reecting what Iand the people with whom I was interactingwere
experiencing, which formed the bases for our interpretations of security. Mindful of my initial
frustrations with portrayals of Central Asia, I concluded that I would focus on investigating local
meanings and understandings of security and worry about securitization theory later.
FIELDWORK 1: TEMPORARILY NEGLECTING THEORY
How should we integrate the insights of theories we learn in the classroom with the views
of participants in politics? Can we simply discard [them] and view reality cold, without
the images, categories, and words that our professional vocabularies provide us?
Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh (2009, 97)
Zirakzadeh talks of learning to discard theories when undertaking eldwork (2009, 97). Dis-
card is arguably too strong a word for the process I undertook; I would suggest that another
way to view the process is as one of temporarily and consciously neglecting theory in favor of
being in the eld. Semantics aside, the point is the same: decentering theory and seeing beyond
the assumptions that it imposes on our interpretation of events requires that the researcher at least
temporarily loosen her ties to theory (ironically, at the very time when she may wish to hang on
to it more tightly than ever as a way to cope with the mess of the social world confronting her)
and strive to be open to multiple and diverse perspectives, interpretations, and linkagesin other
words, to see the bigger picture and not just focus on what theory tells her to nd.
However, while temporarily and consciously neglecting theory and seeing the bigger picture
sound like easy undertakings, researchers still need to ensure that these are done in a systematic and
rigorous manner so that we can justify our interpretations and accompanying knowledge claims. A
critical interpretive ethnographic methodology offers one possible way to achieve these aims. The
qualication of interpretive is important, given that, as Wedeen points out, there is ethnographic
work that is not interpretive and interpretive work that is not ethnographic (Wedeen 2009, 85).
8

In contrast to traditional ethnography, which was dened largely by the researchers prolonged
NOT JUST FINDING WHAT YOU (THOUGHT YOU) WERE LOOKING FOR 395
immersion in a single geographical locale and a focus on the everyday lives of the people present
there, what Denzin (1997) calls interpretive ethnography presents a more exible methodology
designed to accommodate the contemporary world and the changing nature of the eld and our
relationships with it.
As a result, ethnography has been increasingly recognized as a exible and opportunistic
strategy for diversifying and making more complex our understanding of various places, people,
and predicaments through an attentiveness to the different forms of knowledge available from
different social and political locations (Gupta and Ferguson 1997a, 35). The central principle is
that there are multiple ways of knowing that are all potentially equally credible and which collec-
tively create a thick description that can be evaluated against the criteria increasingly in play in
interpretive methodological discussions (see Chapter 7, this volume). Although these criteria offer
a set of standards that can guide the researcher both while undertaking eldwork and during the
process of writing, they offer few specics about how the researcher should conduct her research
in terms of actual methods and their relative advantages and disadvantages.
Despite the traditional focus on participant observation as the primary ethnographic method,
as Amit notes, the limitations of direct observation as a way of knowing mean that in practice,
the ethnographic eld has always been as much characterized by absences as by presences and
hence necessitated a variety of corresponding methodsinterviews, archival documents, census
data, artifacts, media materials and moreto explore processes not immediately or appropriately
accessible through participant observation (Amit 2000, 12). Given that security as an inter-
subjectively constructed phenomenon cannot be directly observed, using a variety of methods
to generate data was vital. In effect, the process was akin to negative space drawing, whereby
instead of focusing on the object of study directly, it is revealed in situ by drawing (or, in the case
of eldwork, describing) its surroundings.
My aim, therefore, became to generate as thick a description as possible of the surroundings.
Pursuing this aim involved shifting from looking for variables (as demanded by securitization
theory) to looking for patterns (Agar 2006, 109) and exploring their formation and dynamics. My
starting point for this undertaking was what I already knew about security issues in Kyrgyzstan.
On the basis of these provisional interpretations, I identied a number of angles that I wanted
to investigate furtherquestions that I could not answer, themes that recurred in what I was ob-
serving, hearing, and reading, and the contradictions and dissonances of which I was becoming
aware. I then set about exploring these angles via a variety of data sources, including quantitative
survey data, semistructured interviews, newspaper and online media reportage, photographs, and
my own observations.
As data began to accumulate, I repeatedly reviewed the patterns that seemed to be emerging.
Crucial for the success of this ongoing review process was engaging reexively with the eldwork
process. Crapanzano (2010, 56) denes researcher reexivity as the need to be critically con-
scious of what one is doing as one does it. First, this meant forming, reforming, and rening my
provisional interpretations of events in Kyrgyzstan and how they related to security as layers of
description were added. What anomalies, dissonances, contradictions, gaps, and shifts were evident
so far? Did I need to revise my interpretations? Second, it meant deciding how to proceed with
my eldwork in response to a further series of questions: What questions were still unanswered
or only partially answered? Were there new angles or themes that seemed worth exploring? What
new questions did I now have? How was I going to try to answer them?
However, while the researchers reexive engagement with her data is a necessary part of in-
terpretive eldwork and ascertaining what she knows, it is not sufcient without accompanying
consideration of how she knows it. G. Rose (1997, 315) reminds us that the overarching aim of
396 ANALYZING DATA
adopting an explicitly reexive stance is to produce non-overgeneralizing knowledges that learn
from other kinds of knowledge. In the case of eldwork, this process involves the researcher
accessing and engaging with local interpretations and understandings of the phenomenon being
investigated and using situated and embodied local knowledges to inform her interpretations
and research, as I discuss in the next section.
FIELDWORK 2: ENGAGING LOCAL KNOWLEDGES
As discussed above, recourse to theoretical frameworks cannot replace the detailed and careful
interrogation of the subject of research within a specic locale, paying attention to local under-
standings. Moving the local to the foreground of a study permits us to focus on the specicities
of, ambiguities in, and disjunctures between theory, method, and the eld. For the study of inher-
ently situated and context-dependent social phenomena such as security, this approach is likely
to produce a more nuanced account, since it actively seeks to consider multiple perspectives and
interpretations rather than focusing on commonalities between empirical cases.
A central task of the eld-based researcher, therefore, is to ensure that her research accom-
modates this multiplicity. Fieldwork places the researcher in the position of a mediator between
multiple sets of cultural norms. This refers not only to the cultures of countries, but also of com-
munities, institutions, and organizations, leading Yanow to call people in this role border crossers
and, in some ways, bicultural translators, who have both expert and local knowledge (2004,
S1415). Yet local knowledge, which is situational and experiential, is often viewed as inferior
to expert or scholarly knowledge, which is theory-based, abstracted, and generalized (Yanow
2004, S10), leading it to be overlooked in many disciplines, especially those where positivist ap-
proaches remain dominant, as in the case of international relations and security studies. Making
this local knowledge explicit is perhaps the most vital component for ensuring our work is fully
contextualized and focused on the subject of research, not on the researcher.
It is up to the researcher to present this knowledge and use it to both contextualize and decenter
disciplinary preferences for expert knowledge, as I demonstrate in this next section, drawing on
two encounters from my eldwork. In the rst encounter, I reect on issues of translating between
the eld language (Russian) and the research language (English), respondent positionality, and
interpretations and multiple meanings. These issues all related to the use of the word security,
with the insights provided by the respondent highlighting its fundamentally situated and contextual
nature. In the second example, I consider how local knowledge can be used by the researcher to
check her provisional interpretations and offer alternative analyses of phenomena under study, in
this case group identities.
Security versus Bezopasnost: Concepts and Their Meanings
One of the things that had become evident in Kyrgyzstan was that the word security itself
needed to be explored. In some ways this was a lost in translation issue: virtually all eldwork
was conducted in Russian, but the research was being written up in English and uses concepts
dened and explained in English. Specically, and centrally, the word security presented a
problem: whilst English draws a distinction between security and safety, Russian has only
one word, bezopasnost, literally meaning without danger and dened as a state [of being] in
which danger does not threaten; in which there is defense from danger (Ozhegov and Shvedova
1997, 41; authors translation).
Furthermore, the meanings of security and bezopasnost seemed qualitatively different. It
NOT JUST FINDING WHAT YOU (THOUGHT YOU) WERE LOOKING FOR 397
often appeared to me that people talked more about safety in an immediate physical sense than
they did about security in the sense of an existential threat. It was often difcult to distinguish
between the two at the subnational level, particularly in light of the continuing uidity of the
sociopolitical situation, in which different identity groups would emerge briey in response to
a particular issue, only to dissolve again as the issues prominence waned. Similarly, despite the
societal dimensions focus on group identities, in respondents discussions there was frequently
no clear distinction made between safety and security, with responses framed by whichever un-
derstanding of bezopasnost was more relevant to them personally at that time.
In light of this difference of meaning, I was conscious of the need to ensure that my interpre-
tations were rooted in local understandings. To address this issue, toward the end of interviews
I asked respondents directly what bezopasnost meant to them. In isolation this question would
have been wholly inadequate, as it tended to be met with confusion or a request to clarify what
I meant, but within the wider context it proved to be very important in picking up nuances and
contradictions and ensuring I remained open to alternative interpretations and understandings. In
addition, from a theoretical perspective, this denitional question further highlighted the need to
corroborate what weand othersmean when we use certain words and terms, since usageand
hence meaningis informed by a myriad of sociocultural factors that require explicit interrogation
by the eldworker. In the interview excerpt below, I have preserved and highlighted this ambigu-
ity of meaning by using the Russian term bezopasnost, rather than automatically laying claim to
knowing or correctly interpreting what my respondent meant.
Most frequently, in answering the question of what security meant to them, interviewees were
keen to stress a range of possible denitions, often contextualizing their answers in considerable
detail. This type of response was exemplied during an interview with a local nongovernmental
organization (NGO) representative in Kyrgyzstan who had been actively involved with conict
prevention activities for almost a decade. Drawing on her experiences, she presented an analysis
of how denitions of bezopasnost had changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, noting that
different actorsin this case the Kyrgyzstani government and the NGO sector respectivelywere
currently using different denitions:
. . . this [awareness of the different meanings of security] is possibly from my experience
of work. Now we already have several understandings in the region of what bezopasnost
is, incidentally thanks to international organizations, that earlier by bezopasnost we always
had in mind state bezopasnost or regional bezopasnost and today we focus on the term hu-
man bezopasnost. I think that this understanding [of the term] is getting through to a certain
elite, to a certain section of the elite. Secondly, who answers for it [i.e., for the maintenance
of securityCW]. If earlier, as we said, there was such an understanding, a Soviet (sovok)
understanding, as state bezopasnost, then the institutes of state were responsible for state
bezopasnost. As a rule this is the Ministry of Defense, the police, the Committee for National
Security, and so on. Today, since were now talking about human bezopasnost, there is also
the notion that not only state institutions are responsible for it, but that the civil sector should
also carry responsibility. . . . Further, since were talking again about state bezopasnost, it is
borders, ones territory, the territory of the country, maybe its natural resources, its intelligence
ofcers, the CIA and the like as a threat. Today we include in bezopasnost such things as a
quality education, for example, equal access to resources, ecology has become a very seri-
ous matter, and, well, quality of life in general. So were already changing the component
parts of the word bezopasnost. Well, and, if earlier when we talked of bezopasnost, then
as a rule, we were looking at an external enemy as a threat, some form of inter-state war.
398 ANALYZING DATA
But today, when we talk about bezopasnost, here [in Kyrgyzstan], undoubtedly, were talk-
ing about internal political chemistry, put it this way, about the interrelationships between
the authorities, the opposition and citizens, about the presence or absence or weakness or
strength of mechanisms of state institutions or other institutions that are capable of resolving
disputed, conictual problems.
9
As this response shows, in contrast to theorists desires to dene concepts in a very precise and
xed way, words frequently possess a multiplicity of meanings that are intersubjective and inher-
ently situated historically, politically, socioculturally, and personally (see also Schaffer, Chapter
9, this volume).
Yet in its orthodox form, securitization theory cannot easily accommodate such multiplicity due
to its focus on a particular understanding of security, as discussed above. Fieldwork in this respect
presents the researcher with an opportunity to destabilize theory-based denitions of socially
constructed phenomena in two ways. First, alternative interpretations from respondents can be
reported and critically engaged with as part of the researchers ongoing sense-making process in
answer to the question of how security means. Second, the situated nature of security can be
emphasized and explored by deferring to local terms or denitions, as I have done in this section
by using the Russian word bezopasnost rather than translating it and losing the ambiguity contained
within it. While this deliberate maintenance of ambiguity may seem unnecessary to some, I argue
that it can be a useful way of highlighting the situation-specic nature of our understanding and
helping to decenter both theorys and the researchers interpretations. It demonstrates how key
termshere, bezopasnost, rather than securityare used and generate their meanings in the
eldwork context; it also serves as a reminder to both researcher and subsequent readers of the
need to remain consciously open to other possible meanings, given that their interpretations are
only ever provisional and partial.
Local Knowledge as a Check and Guide
During my time in Bishkek and Osh, the importance of local knowledge was demonstrated to me
more than once, especially as I actively tried to get my interviewees to explain things that were,
judging by the looks on their faces, incredibly obvious. In many cases this required me to deliber-
ately ask questions that must have seemed at best naive and at worst idiotic. Despite the discomfort
of this state of affairs, it became apparent that assuming the role of an innocent abroad was often
an effective way of building up my understanding of the situation, frequently making me rethink
my interpretations and understandings. This approach had the further advantage of encouraging
my respondents to articulate, explicitly, the interconnections they saw between different topics
and phenomena. This was quite frequently invaluable for helping me to see patterns more clearly,
both individually and in terms of how they related to other themes and issues. For example, when
I asked the representative of an NGO who worked with men who sleep with men about the rela-
tive importance of sexual orientation to peoples identity, the answer went considerably beyond
providing a direct response to that question, linking it to wider identity dynamics and politics:
I think its like everywhere. These people face the same problems as in other countries.
And of course, rst of all they want to organize their private life according to their sexual
orientation. Nationality comes second. . . . They try to associate with the people who are
like them, not nationality- but personality-wise. But when the circle of contacts is wide,
divisions begin: this is a Kyrgyz circle, and this is an Uzbek one. Europeans, Russians join
NOT JUST FINDING WHAT YOU (THOUGHT YOU) WERE LOOKING FOR 399
in all circles, theyre more or less neutral, but they try to keep themselves to themselves.
Everyone has their own traditions, certain groups consider themselves more elite, so to
speak. Just like Baltic peoplethey dont associate with Russians, that circle is beneath
them. The same happens here. But mostly the division is social. Wealthy people form one
circle. Common people and slackers not earning good money will form another circle, ir-
respective of ethnicity.
10
As can be seen, the respondents focus moved rapidly from sexual orientation and a commonality
of human experience to what identities people nd pertinent in different situations and the fac-
tors inuencing these choices. Furthermore, my respondents answer identied a variety of social
hierarchies and divisions and the way they operated in Bishkek. While I had experienced some
of these dynamics, such as social divisions along ethnic lines, and was observing others, such as
stratication along socioeconomic lines, this reply provided an extremely useful overview, leading
to insight that I was able to use as a point of reference and comparison in developing my under-
standing of how identity was experienced in Bishkek both intersectionally and contingently.
Reexive engagement with responses such as those above means that the researcher can use the
answers to contextualize the development of her interpretations within the research process as the
product of particular interactions between particular people, which produce particular interpreta-
tions and understandings, rather than simply reporting what was said as fact. The result is that
the how of security begins to be made visiblethat is, the process of knowledge construction
and the interpretive moments concerning the meanings of security in practice become legible
in the details of local actors narrative responses. In addition, as demonstrated, respondents ex-
planations often present insights that can help researchers engage critically with the concepts and
theoretical frameworks we use. In the rst example, my respondents detailed description of the
different denitions of bezopasnost used by two important local actors helped me to problematize
the Copenhagen Schools conceptualization of security by offering alternative interpretations.
Both the interpretations tted only partially with securitization theorys presentation of security,
meaning that I was faced with an abductive puzzle, which enabled me to step out of the framework
of the existing theory as I worked to reconcile the tensions presented by the discrepancies. The
second encounter, meanwhile, by articulating the complex, dynamic, multiple, and contextual
nature of group identities in Bishkek, offered me a counterpoint to the sedimented notion of
identity that underpins societal security (Buzan and Wver 1997, 244), similarly opening a path
toward rethinking my usage of the existing theoretical framework.
WRITING FIELDWORK MEANINGFULLY
As graduate students we are told that anthropology equals experience; you are not an
anthropologist until you have the experience of doing it. But when one returns from the
eld the opposite immediately applies: anthropology is not the experiences that have
made you an initiate, but only the objective data you have brought back.
Paul Rabinow (1977, 4)
As Rabinows observation illustrates, even in disciplines where eldwork is a fundamental expec-
tation, traditionally the process of writing has involved the transformation of eldwork experi-
ences into a scholarly account: the researcher is expected to clean up the mess of her eldwork,
smooth off the rough edges and awkward angles, systematize her account to show the results of
an apparently linear and successfully executed research process, and remove any trace of herself
400 ANALYZING DATA
from the research in order to adopt a supposedly objective view from nowhere (Gold 2002,
224). Thus, by sleight of pen, the unruly, noisy, multilingual, and fractious voices of the elds
local knowledges are disciplined into a singular, orderly, restrained, dry, soulless academic voice
that dispassionately presents an account based on the authors expert knowledge (Doty 2004,
380). The result risks being an account that has not only been reduced to its decantable parts, as
explored in the opening sections, but which is also left unlabeled, a generic product identiable
only by the container into which it has been poured.
Perhaps predictably, I once again found myself ghting against this process(ing): how could I
justify editing my research to t this format when (1) it had been dissatisfaction with existing treat-
ments of Central Asia that had in large part provoked me to undertake a PhD in the rst place, and
(2) I had just experienced rsthand the limited explanatory and conceptual power of securitization
theory and the concept of societal security in Kyrgyzstan? Reecting on his own research, Tim
Pachirat (2011) describes vividly and humorously the quandary posed by this tension between
disciplinary conventions and what the researcher knows based on eldwork experiences:
Light footed the brave ethnographer crosses the swinging bridge only to realize half way
through that the ropes are fraying under the weight of baggage hitherto unexamined. Creak,
creak, SNAP! Alas, there falls our brave ethnographer into the Canyon of Postmodern Doubt
and Despair. (Pachirat 2007)
This baggage of disciplinary conventions, in general terms, can lead to what Zirakzadeh
identies as a conict over the desire to write ones research in a manner that is meaningful for
everyday people (2009, 104)specically, that is, for the people about whose lives we have
been researching and are now writing. As a result, researchers who experience a gap between what
they encounter while conducting eldwork and what theory tells them it means, and who wish
to bridge this gap, are faced with the task of nding a way to represent the world that capture[s]
participants understandings, feelings and choices (Zirakzadeh 2009, 104) while simultaneously
remaining theoretically engaged.
Until this point, my own response to this challenge had been to adopt an interpretive approach
using ethnographic methods to help me navigate the messy and multiple elds of research in which
I found myself. Faced with writing up my eldwork, however, I felt horribly daunted by the
prospect of showing this tension in the account that I presented, feeling that it would make my
research (and hence my credibility as a scholar) even more vulnerable to criticism and dismissal.
It would have been easier in many ways to retreat back into disciplinary conventions, listing the
methods used to collect the empirical data during eldwork, commonly expressed in a relatively
brief methodological statement such as this:
Over two periods of eldwork (September 2005January 2006 in Bishkek and MarchJune
2006 in Osh), I conducted 32 semistructured interviews with representatives of civil society,
journalists, and international organizations on their understandings of security in Kyrgyz-
stan. I identied securitizing actors, referent objects, and threat narratives as presented in local
Russophone print media and international electronic media reports in English and Russian.
I attended public protests and rallies at which I took photographs in order to triangulate the
data obtained via interviews and media coverage. I also kept a eld diary, recording my
activities, observations, thoughts, and questions as they occurred to me.
This brief summary is entirely accuratebut it suggests a degree of purposefulness and straight-
forwardness that I certainly did not feel at the time. Yet if securitization is, as the Copenhagen
NOT JUST FINDING WHAT YOU (THOUGHT YOU) WERE LOOKING FOR 401
School claims, intersubjective and socially constructed (Buzan, Wver, and de Wilde 1998,
31), then what of the researchers role in constructing it? After all, it is the researcher who acts
as the translator between events and theory; my understandings and interpretations of peoples
words and actions, as well as my interpretation of the theory, all contribute to the nal account of
security that I present to you, the reader.
A formal methods statement reveals very little about the role of the researcher in creating the
very knowledge that she presents. It does not tell you how I negotiated access to my intervie-
wees, nor how or why I decided to interview these people in particular. What did I document and
why? Why did I choose to spend time in Bishkek and Osh, rather than elsewhere, and why did
I not conduct my eldwork as a single, continuous period of time? What was the motivation for
generating quantitative data from a survey when, like many interpretive social scientists, I am
skeptical of statistics at the best of times? (This was exactly why I chose to do itto see how the
survey results could be affected by contextual factors.) What language or languages did I work
in? Did I use an interpreter? Why did not I make an effort to learn Kyrgyz, which is, after all, the
state language? What relationships did I develop with respondents? How was I received by the
people with whom I interacted? In short, how did I affect my research?
Answering such questions in detail, I believe, is vital for understanding and evaluating re-
search and the accounts presented by making explicit the knowledge claims being made. In ef-
fect, it is the process of providing the hitherto absent product information so that consumers
unaware that locally produced Kyrgyzstani security tastes quite different from the academic,
laboratory-produced Danish version are alerted to the fact and can (if so inclined) evaluate it on
its own terms, rather than dismissing it as inferior or faulty. Writing my eldwork meaningfully,
therefore, meant including enough information for people reading my account (the consumers)
to understand not only what Kyrgyzstani security was, but the conditions in which it had been
created. As a result, two aspects needed writing back in to my account: securitization theory
and the concept of societal security, and the relationship between what I brought to the research
and the knowledge claims I was advancing.
Writing Theory Back In
If the experiential process of eldwork requires an awareness of the double hermeneutic,
11
then
writing requires what Yanow (2009a, 278) has called a triple hermeneutic, with the third interpre-
tive moment occurring during the deskwork phase, as [the researcher] reads and rereads eld
notes and analyzes them, and during the textwork phase when crafting a narrative that presents
both eldwork and analysis. All of the sense-making processes that one experiences in the
eld continue during the deskwork and textwork of processing data and creating ones analysis:
reviewing events, perceptions, reactions, rereading interviews and printed sources, reexamining
photographsallowing the researcher to test and rene her interpretations in relation to previous
and other interpretations in a process of travelling back and forth between the part and the whole,
experience and text, eldwork and interpretation (Vrasti 2008, 84).
It is as part of this process that theory needs writing back in to the research process. Travel-
ling also occurs between different ways of knowing; that is, between the experiential knowledge
of the eld and the abstract knowledge of theory. In this respect the adoption of an interpretive
approach presents the researcher with an alternative way to engage with theory. Instead of pre-
dening how the topic of the research is to be conceptualized, the interpretation offered by theory
no longer has any claim to being an authoritative or expert account, but rather becomes one of
a range of possible interpretations that collectively present an account of the phenomenonin
this case, security in Kyrgyzstan.
402 ANALYZING DATA
One of the main consequences of reversing the conventional relationship between theory and
the eld by focusing on local knowledges is that the limitations of theory-based interpretations
of social phenomena are highlighted, since the eld potentially introduces or reveals possible
alternative understandings of the role of the theory in conceptualizing the phenomenon being ex-
plored. Because the researcher now has eld data in hand, there is no longer the need, necessarily,
to defer to established theory as the arbiter of the topic under analysis. Instead, the researcher is
now able to compare and contrast different interpretations, each of which represents a particular
knowledge of the topic (e.g., security) in order to identify patterns and themes, but also to ac-
knowledge differences, gaps or omissions, slippages, and dissonances.
Signicantly, reinterpreting theory in this way creates space to engage with the politics of
knowledge production by destabilizing the notion of a xed hierarchy of knowledge types in which
theory-based knowledge automatically takes precedence over experiential forms of knowledge.
In the case of the Copenhagen School, for example, the effect is to reveal the Western-centric
normative assumptions that underpin securitization theory and the privileging of a particular form
of security that is dependent on actors having sufcient social and political capital to speak
security (Hansen 2000; Wilkinson 2007). In doing so, the researcher is able to begin to negotiate
the tensions between the particular lived experiences of social actors and analytic categories we
use to generalize about them (Wedeen 2009, 85). There is, however, still one further element that
needs to be written back in to our research in order to bridge the gap between theoretical and
experiential forms of knowledge as meaningfully as possible: the researcher.
Writing the Researcher Back In
. . . it is easier to assert that one is being sensitive to contingency and complexity than
to be so in practice. Whenever a researcher is writing an account, it is impractical and
perhaps impossible to be sensitive to all voices. To compose a story, one must choose
whose tale to tell.
Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh (2009, 115)
While the researcher has a choice of which participants or communities tales she chooses to tell,
there is one tale that she cannot avoid telling if her research account is going to be as coherent and
transparent as possible for those reading it: that of her own role in the research process. Signicantly,
in adopting an interpretive approach to eldwork, the researcher becomes both a data source as well
as the interpreter of data, resulting in a blurring of the boundaries between process and content
(Sultana 2007, 376). Reexivity is not, therefore, something that can be retrospectively bolted
on to our research. Rather, writing reexively is a continuation of the reexivity practiced by the
researcher in the eld, which informed and guided the eldwork process. Centrally, it demands
the explicit articulation of how the research was actually done, why, and with what effects for the
resulting interpretation that is presented.
Beyond practical and ethical constraints, the researchers person and personality are a key
component of any answer to these questions. Consequently, the researcher needs to write herself
back into her account in order to situate her study as the interpretation of a particular individual.
On a basic level this takes the form of a reexive consideration of the researchers positionality in
relation to both the eld and her research, in terms of the roles that she performed in her interac-
tions with people in the eld location and the inuence of her positionings on the data generated, a
topic about which I have written elsewhere in relation to my experiences in Kyrgyzstan (Wilkinson
2008; Wilkinson 2012a). This personal reexivity, which involves the direct writing in of the
NOT JUST FINDING WHAT YOU (THOUGHT YOU) WERE LOOKING FOR 403
author through the use of the rst person, can then be extended to develop what Wedeen (2010,
264) describes as an epistemological reexivity [that is directed] toward the discipline, posing
questions about what bounds the discipline and normalizes its modes of inquiry, rendering other
possibilities unsayable, unthinkable, irrelevant, or absurd. In considering these questions, the
researcher interrogates not only her position(s) in the eld, but also her relationship to and role in
the wider politics of knowledge production.
Here, I suggest that the development of a critical sensibility or sensibilities is likely to be
useful in enhancing the researchers personal and epistemological reexivity. Building on the
basic principle of positionality, a critical sensibility refers to the creation of an explicit awareness
regarding how a particular aspect of ones character or person affects ones perceptions of ones
social environment (Wafer 1996, 261) and, by extension, ones interactions within it. While in
principle an interrogation of almost any aspect of identity could form the basis for such a sensi-
bility, in practice it is likely to be a personal characteristic that the researcher has experienced as
being at odds with the prevailing societal norms of her current environment. In other words, at
least temporarily, the researcher experiences being other(ed); and in this process, she is made
conscious not only of the specicity of her interpretation, but also that it is not necessarily shared
by many of the people with whom she is interacting. Furthermore, she may become aware that
the identity associated with the views or characteristics in question is perceived negatively or is
even stigmatized by others and that, consequently, her own interpretation may conict with local
interpretations.
The result is that the researcher may experience a sense of cognitive dissonance or displace-
ment that causes her to review her understanding of her role and of her relationship to both her
research and the eld. While the experience may be quite uncomfortable and evoke powerful
emotions, the critical sensibilities arising from such displacements can also be used strategically
(C. Katz 1994) to create particular opportunities for the generation of additional insights into and
critiques of both the phenomenon being investigated and the nature and politics of knowledge
production (Wilkinson 2012a).
As an example, let me return to my eldwork in Kyrgyzstan and how being genderqueer inu-
enced my eldwork. I use genderqueer to describe myself in that my sense of my own gender
and my gender presentation do not t with dominant socially constructed norms of gender as a
dichotomous and heterosexual binary of male and female.
12
In and of itself, being genderqueer
is simply a different experience of gender. Its salience stems from the fact that my interactions
with other people make me aware that this difference is often seen as problematic in some way:
for example, most innocuously, people can be uncomfortable not knowing whether to use male or
female pronouns; more embarrassingly, it can lead to accusations of being in the wrong bath-
room (Halberstam 1998, 2029); and, most dangerously, it can lead to aggression or violence in
retaliation for perceived transgressions of social norms (Bechtter 2007).
In Bishkek and Osh, I felt that my identity as a genderqueer person and thereby a member of a
minority group arguably made me more aware of gaps and silences in who gets to speak secu-
rity in the public domain and in whose name. And I realized that these had signicant theoretical
implications beyond existing critiques (Hansen 2000). Specically, it made me ask why some
identities that people tend to feel are fundamental to their sense of selfgender, in the case of
the social survey I conducted, gender and sexuality in my caseproved incapable of generating
sufcient cohesion and solidarity to meet the Copenhagen Schools denition of a societal identity
(Buzan, Wver, and de Wilde 1998, 119). In this respect I was able to use my personal awareness
of how being queer affects my own perceptions and interpretations of interactions and events,
what could be described as a queer sensibility, to inform my research or, more accurately, add
404 ANALYZING DATA
a different angle to it. This is not to say that other people would not have been aware of such
silences, nor that there are not many more silent/silenced voices that I did not seek to include
and which different sensibilities might have revealed. Indeed, it seems likely that many research-
ers will nd that they are aware of a number of sensibilities that they may or may not choose to
draw upon during their eldwork. At the same time, explicitly acknowledging such sensibili-
ties can deepen the degree of reexivity achieved by accessing the researchers own embodied
knowledge, helping the researcher to more fully position herself as an integral part of the research
process and product. The wider impact of this (re)positioning is to highlight how the portrayal of
expert knowledge as disembodiedthat is, as separate and detached from the people involved
in its creation through their practices, experiences, and interactionsstunts the development of
disciplinary knowledge, leaving it undernourished and dependent on abstract theory to survive.
In contrast, expert knowledge that is seen and understood as embodied is freed to grow through
engagement with local knowledge that challenges the assumed containing capabilities of the
theoretical perspective framing the research.
CONCLUSION: LABELING CONTAINERS AND THE PROVENANCE
OF RESEARCH
In this chapter I have explored how researchers can navigate the tensions between the different
types of knowledge generated by theory-driven and eld-based approaches. As discussed at the
start of the chapter, the simplicity and directness of Buzan and Wvers metaphor of decanting
empirical material into theoretical containers belies the fact that writing eld-based research ac-
counts that are both theoretically engaged and meaningful requires acknowledgement not only of
the eld context, but also of the wider production context. That is, it is necessary to add information
about the provenance of the research to the generic theoretical label on the container in order to
reduce the tendency of decanting practices to turn wine into water as the richness and textures
the meaningsof the eld are processed out in the name of compatibility with theory.
Adopting an interpretive approach to both the eldwork and the writing process eventually of-
fered me a way to reconceptualize the relationship between theory and empirical data. During the
Kyrgyzstan eldwork, I decided to temporarily neglect theory and focus on making sense of what I
was observing through ongoing reexive engagement with the eld and the data that were generated.
Given the impossibility of simply going to the eld and locating security, or indeed any other
theory-driven phenomenon, my aim was to build up a thick description of the context in which patterns
of security would become evident and hence interpretable. This was achieved through reexive
engagement with a range of localthat is, situated, contextual, and experientialknowledges,
including my own, and using this ongoing process to guide the progress of my eldwork.
It was only at the deskwork stage that the reconceptualized relationship between theory and
empirical data became evident, emerging from the dilemma of how to write a nal account of
my research that was meaningfulboth to me, in an intellectual and experiential way, and to the
people with whom I had interacted, in a way respectful of their own knowledge and experiences.
In extending the reexive stance I had adopted while in Kyrgyzstan to the process of writingand
writing both theory and the researcher back in to my accountI was able to draw upon multiple
interpretations of security in Kyrgyzstan, thus more fully situating my account. In this way, the
theory I had initially intended to apply to Kyrgyzstan as an analytical tool in order to locate and
extract security became one interpretation among many. The contrasts between these various
theoretical and local interpretations revealed both the particulars of the site and the subject being
theorized, thereby providing context for their interpretation.
NOT JUST FINDING WHAT YOU (THOUGHT YOU) WERE LOOKING FOR 405
NOTES
An earlier version of this chapter titled Letting Reality Interfere with Theory: Towards a How of Fieldwork-
Based Securitization Studies was presented at the 52nd Annual International Studies Association Convention
in Montreal, Canada, March 1619, 2011. My thanks to Dvora Yanow and Peri Schwartz-Shea for all their
assistance, support, and patience with reworking the chapter into its current form.
1. Although Kyrgyz is the state language of the Kyrgyz Republic, Russian has ofcial status as a language
of interethnic communication. Kyrgyzstans history as part of the USSR means that Russian is still widely
spoken either as a rst or second language, especially in urban areas, despite efforts to linguistically Kyr-
gyzify politics and business. Russian is also many peoples everyday language, regardless of their ethnicity,
including most of the people whom I decided to interviewprincipally representatives of various NGOs
and international organizations, and journalists. Among respondents to a survey that I conducted as part of
my eldwork, for example, 73.9 percent of the Bishkek sample classed Russian as their main language of
communication, while in Osh the gure was 26.5 percent with a further 26.1 percent classing Russian as one
of their main languages. In addition, I already spoke Russian at a high level, having taken my undergraduate
degree in Russian, and was comfortable using it to conduct taped interviews. These two factors meant that,
specically for my eldwork, Russian was the most appropriate language to use.
2. A condition of my research council stipend was that I had to complete ve generic social science re-
search methods courses (Foundations of Social Science Research, Basic and Advanced Qualitative Research
Methods, and Basic and Advanced Quantitative Research Methods) by the end of my rst year of doctoral
study. While I understand the logic of taking these courses, my sense is that methods training, even when it
is supposed to be about the doing of research, is still often a far cry from how methods work (or not) when
they hit the uneven terrain of the eldand that this is not usually part of graduate methods discussion, let
alone formal training.
3. This is not to suggest that this discrepancy was deliberate. Rather, it reected the fact that when asked
to explain how things work, many people are, at least initially, likely to explain how things are supposed
to work (i.e., according to rules, regulations, laws, and/or conventions), rather than immediately focusing
on how things actually work, which is likely to be far more contingent and subjectiveand potentially
involves bending or even breaking rules.
4. The phenomenon of Western discourses of danger in the portrayal of Central Asia has since been
the subject of publications by Sandole (2007) and Heathershaw and Megoran (2011).
5. Soviet Studies, especially Sovietology (the study of Soviet politics), underwent something of an ex-
istential crisis in the aftermath of the collapse of the USSR as scholars, especially in the United States and
United Kingdom, sought to nd a new framework for their research, which was no longer so heavily driven
(or funded) by national intelligence demands and whose traditional knowledge claims were increasingly
challenged by political scientists, who saw no reason why theoretical perspectives could not be brought to
bear on the study of postcommunist politics and societies (Daniels 1991; Hanson 2003).
6. Safe enough in this case meant that travel to Kyrgyzstan was not prohibited by the UK Foreign
and Commonwealth Ofce.
7. Short is a relative concept, as by IR standards seven months was quite a long time to spend in the
eld. I had funding for three years and the thesis had to be submitted within four years, so I planned the
eldwork with this timeframe in mind, spending four months in Bishkek (between September 2005 and
January 2006) and then three months in Osh (late March 2006 to late June 2006).
8. [See also Introduction to this volume.Eds.]
9. Interview, Bishkek, November 30, 2005.
10. Interview, Bishkek, November 26, 2005.
11. The double hermeneutic is a theory developed by Anthony Giddens (1977) that the relationship be-
tween everyday concepts and social science concepts is two-way, that is, they both inuence and affect each
other. [See also the discussion in Jacksons Chapter 14, this volumeEds.]
12. While there is no single denition of genderqueer, I use the term here to describe a range of gender
identities that do not conform with socially constructed norms of gender as either man or woman.