Drawing on a fourteen-month ethnographic fieldwork experience along the border of Bangladesh and India, I offer a narrative of daily challenges and uncertainties in the ‘field’. Highlighting my positionality and reflexivity, I suggest that first, although a researcher may use social capital to gain access, it may raise concerns regarding the genuineness of the participant’s response. Second, with careful attention, unplanned moments and spontaneous conversations can be turned into sources for valuable insight. Third, pushing the boundaries of social norms to attain a textbook example of ‘gender balance’ does not necessarily ‘add value’ to the research; instead, is likely to make it more challenging to access the same population for further research. Finally, I reaffirm that being from the same region with a similar background does not make the researcher an ‘insider’. Rather, their positionality becomes more ‘fluid’ and constantly shifts between an insider, an outsider, both, and sometimes none.

我借鉴孟加拉国和印度边境地区14个月的人种志田野调查经验，叙述了“田野”中的日常挑战和不确定性。在强调我的立场和反思性时，我建议首先，尽管研究人员可能会使用社会资本来获取访问权，但可能会引起对参与者回答真实性的担忧。其次，在认真关注下，计划外的时刻和自发的对话可以变成宝贵的见解的来源。第三，突破社会规范的界限以获得教科书中“性别平衡”的例子不一定会使研究“增值”。取而代之的是，有可能使同一个人群的进一步研究更具挑战性。最后，我重申，来自同一地区，背景相似的人并不能使研究人员成为“内幕人士”。相反，他们的位置变得更加“流畅”，并在内部人和外部人（两者兼而有之）之间不断变化。