Portable Positionality Protocol: knowledge, power, and identity in urban ethnography

This article critically reexamines ethnographic practice by foregrounding the singularity of place, reconceiving the ‘site’ through researchers’ presence, interaction, contestation, and dialogic engagement. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Korail, Dhaka, this study examines how the researchers’ positionalities influence knowledge, power, and identity in an urban area. It identifies a paradox in which intersecting positionalities are initially obscured, before clarifying the field relations. It ethnographically reconceptualizes the urban field, which I refer to as the “Portable Positionality Protocol (PPP).” PPP theorizes knowledge production as a fluid, situated process in which positionality is continuously negotiated, challenging fixed insider/outsider binaries and enriching post-structural urban research.