Ethnographic research positions the researcher as simultaneously insider and outsider to the community studied.

Evidence

I talked to community leaders and introduced myself to imams at local Islamic centers. Although my own background is both Arab and Muslim, I don’t live in Bay Ridge, the neighborhood in Brooklyn with the highest concentration of Arab Americans, and most of my Arab and Muslim friends and associates prior to my writing this book were older and came from the academic world. I was, in other words, both an insider and outsider to the community. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 55

Categorization

• DEFINE: A concrete working example of the insider/outsider dialectic in qualitative research practice.