Qualitative Inquiry

 

Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Click here for free access to the SAGE eReference platform!

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Gaines, E.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
 Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati  
What's this?
Qualitative Inquiry, Vol. 11, No. 4, 518-534 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/1077800405278204

Interpreting India, Identity, and Media From the Field: Exploring the Communicative Nature of the Exotic Other

Elliot Gaines

Wright State University

This study explores the process of interpreting interviews and media collected during two visits to India. Looking at the communicative nature of Indian identity, the author takes into account his own identity as an American exposed to a lifetime of exotic representations of Indian culture. Recognizing the limits of time for study in the field, recorded media provide valuable evidence and open discursive avenues to greater understandings of our world. As a discursive space, the camera’s gaze focuses attention back to the ontological conditions of the researchers’ experiences as a forum for the negotiation of values and beliefs. Evidence of the process of communication provides a better understanding of the construction of meaning and identity. Thus, the mediated data, reconsidered later, recall the eidetic essence of existential knowledge supporting the process of ethnographic writing.

Key Words: semiotics • India • identity • exotic Other • representation


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?