Positionality in Oral History Research: Proximities and Paradoxes of ‘Insider’ Status

A long-standing debate in oral history centres on the researcher’s positionality as either an ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’ to the research participants. This comment argues that insider status is not a stable but a relational category, one that must be critically interrogated to avoid privileging insider perspectives. Reflecting on thirteen life-history interviews with South Asian scientists who undertook postgraduate training at post-war British universities, I examine how the normative assumption of a shared ‘South Asianness’ shaped my negotiation of the insider/outsider positionality continuum. My positionality as a South Asian researcher in the UK studying previous generations of South Asian students certainly reduced intersubjective distance with interviewees. However, the presumption of insider status also exposes the instability of identity-based claims to authority. The immense heterogeneity of nationality, language, age, class, gender, occupation, educational and migration trajectories of the interviewees complicated any straightforward claim to insider status on my part. By examining how shared identity both enabled and complicated the research encounter, this comment destabilises the insider/outsider dialectic underpinning research positionality, arguing instead that positionality is a shifting intersubjective condition, constituted through an iterative process of reflexive praxis within historical research and analysis.