Negotiating Fluid Identities

Abstract

This article emerges from struggles we, two American–Israeli women, have encountered while conducting research in Israel on issues related to Jewish-Arab dynamics. Since beginning our research we have faced a single question in nearly every interview: “Where are you from?” Embedded in this question are a whole host of other queries: “Are you American? Israeli? Jewish? Arab?” “What is your native language?” This article engages in the methodological consequences of our responses to these questions and broader identity-negotiations during qualitative interviews. What happens when we, as researchers, foreground or background, particular identities? Furthermore, how does the fluidity of our identities inform the specific information we gather? We analyze two case studies in which the fluidity of our identities unfolds during an interview to highlight the coconstruction of interviews and the active process involved in presenting facets of ourselves, a process that conditions subsequent data collection and knowledge production.