Qualitative Research Beyond the Insider-Outsider Divide: A Bourdieu-Informed Analysis

Debates in qualitative research have long centred on the insider-outsider distinction, often treating positionality as a fixed binary. This study reconceptualises positionality as a dynamic and relational process within sensitive research contexts, focusing on drug-facilitated sexual assaults (DFSA) in Greece. Its aim is to explore how shifting positionalities shape the research encounter and knowledge production. Methodologically, it employs a Bourdieu-informed analysis of qualitative fieldwork, mobilising the concepts of habitus , field , and participant objectivation . The findings show that field-generated counter-discourses challenge the adequacy of static institutional vocabularies in capturing configurations of harm, vulnerability, and agency, while also unsettling aspects of the researcher’s habitus. Although outsider status may initially constrain openness, participant objectivation enables the transformation of positional distance into a dialogic resource. The study concludes that positionality emerges as co-constituted through the interplay between embodied dispositions and field-specific vocabularies, while it reconceptualizes reflexivity beyond individual self-awareness, but rather as a form of participant objectivation that situates the researcher within broader structures of power, habitus, and field relations.