Episodic tourism ethnography in a multi-ethnic field: Uneven immersion and multi-layered shifting positionalities

Abstract

This paper advances a methodological argument for episodic tourism ethnography in multi-ethnic, politically sensitive field sites. Drawing from my fieldwork in Taman Negara, Malaysia, I explore how a tourism ethnographer moves across different communities and shifts between the tourist-facing and host-community arenas, all while managing insider-outsider roles. Within this broader reflection, the paper introduces “multi-layered shifting positionalities” as a heuristic for understanding how layered positionalities are organised through movement between two principal arenas in tourism ethnography, as well as the researcher’s shifting positionality across different communities. The paper shows how uneven immersion, boundary-conscious routeing, and retreat-and-return rhythms can become deliberate strategies for sustaining access, protecting relationships and interpreting inter-group tensions without being absorbed into any single group’s worldview. It also clarifies the ethical implications of such mobility, emphasising consent, role presentation, and long-term accountability. The paper advances tourism anthropology and critical qualitative methods by providing practical guidance for researchers in complex, plural and contested destinations.