The ‘Refexive Rapport’ in a Participatory Ethnography: Research with Children Living in a Bangladeshi Slum

Abstract

Rapport-building and reflexivity play critical roles in achieving ethical decision-making in ethnographic fieldwork. While a plethora of publications is dedicated to explaining them separately, very little is known about how ethnographers maintain reciprocity between rapport-building and reflexivity. To this end, I critically evaluate the literature, and, by utilizing the stage model of rapport-building (Pitts and Miller-Day 2007) and the variants of reflexivity (Finlay 2002), I propose a conceptual and analytical framework-‘reflexive rapport’. Drawing on my PhD fieldwork employing participatory ethnography with children living in a Bangladeshi slum, I maintain that in such fieldwork ‘reflex..