During my fieldwork, I also become part of a group that created a campaign called; Break the
silence: Ask for Zarni, which is working with addressing sexual harassment in the Yangon
bar-scene. This group consists of local persons and foreigners living in Yangon. This activity
was not deliberately meant to become a source of information for my fieldwork but did after
some time give insight into the field of fonts, something I could not foresee. The campaign is
therefore used in chapter 4 as an example of digital script challenges, without describing any
participants in the group.
Through different contacts that knew of my work, I was asked to present one workshop and
one lecture in basic research skill at two different business schools in Yangon. The lecture
was conducted in February and the workshop in May, both with an underlying goal to get in
contact with students, as well as the benefits of experience with planning and conducting
presentations and workshops. From the lecture, I, unfortunately, did not gain much
information other than a few conversations after the lecture itself. However, the workshop
introduced me to students that would participate in my focus-group later on. The focus-group
was conducted to gain more specific information regarding the font-issue addressed in chapter
4 since this was an issue I struggled to getting a good overview and understanding of. In
hindsight, I experienced that a workshop is preferable over a lecture since you get the
opportunity to engage with the student in a more effective way than through a lecture. I
experienced that students were more interested in helping me out after working a bit with me
and get to know me ahead of time.
Fieldwork Strategies and Positioning
As an anthropologist, participating observation, or “hanging out” was my primary method
during the fieldwork. I would meet my informants in day to day situations, travel with them,
and spend some time getting to know them and gain a relation built on mutual trust regarding
my work. This strategy would imply that my main tool in the field is myself and my
interpretation and understanding of my surroundings. Accordingly, the ethnographer needs to
be reflexive of the position and its affection and interpretations. As Madden writes:
“a critical appreciation of positionality is a tool with which to check my ethnographical
baggage for presumption and prejudice… …Ethnographers, just like the groups they study,
come with histories and socialization, and the influence of these elements in ethnographic
research needs to be properly understood” (Madden, 2010, p. 22)
This would imply that everything the ethnographer does during the fieldwork will, some way
or another affect the outcome of a situation. Just who I am, where I come from, and how I
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