'You have your own history. Keep your hands off ours!' On being rejected in the field

This article explores some of the methodological and theoretical challenges that occur in research contexts where the anthropologist is categorically unwelcome. Based on significant episodes from her own fieldwork on the homecoming of African Americans to Ghana, the author discusses the double edge of positionality as both structural placement and invididual agency - for the researcher as well as his or her interlocutors. The article aims at htree points: First, it critically discusses the notion of White invisibility that still underlies much of our scholarship. Second, it deals with the possible hiatus between methodological presumptions and the actual behaviour of the researcher in the field. Third, it questions the assumption of the superiority of 'anthropological' as opposed to 'local' knowledge.