Authenticity, legitimacy and power: Critical ethnography and identity politics

This paper examines the methodological issues in conducting critical ethnographic research on Italian Canadian youths’ discursive negotiation of identities, language and power across and within the Italian Canadian world in Toronto. My multiples and forms of linguistic and cultural capital were important points that participants’ engaged with that also positioned me in particular ways that created methodological dilemmas in relation to: (i) access to the field; (ii) being seen as an ‘insider/outsider’ to this community; and (iii) the ways in which I constructed the discourses of Italianness through my data analysis. The way in which participants negotiated power had consequences for my role as a researcher and the identities I was permitted to claim across the research sites. These are important methodological points of analysis that raise wider issues relating to how researchers construct, negotiate relationships when conducting fieldwork, and the way in which power is negotiated and not always ‘held’ by the researcher within the research. As critical ethnographers there is a need to shed light on the ways in which researcher identities and positionality play a crucial role in the production and construction of data within research.