Positionality in STEM Ethnographies: “Where Are You Really from?”

Around one-third of the science and engineering workforce in the US and UK are recorded as “foreign-born,” and more than half of the doctoral degrees in computer sciences are awarded to international students in the US. Despite this, studies of scientific fields often stabilize, fix, and take national and geographic categories for granted by assigning and assuming citizenship or institutional affiliation. This chapter reflects on transnational encounters in technoscientific fields, arguing for the importance of attending to the historical power dynamics inherent in the (global) positionalities of both the actors within these fields and the researchers studying them and how they understand, navigate, negotiate, or disregard their situatedness. Drawing on my multi-sited fieldwork on the “global supercomputing race” and my experience as a female “foreign-born” sociologist affiliated with an institute in the US, I explore the challenges and insights of studying a male-dominated field and casting my ethnographic gaze upon the Global North. Focusing on three different encounters with the question, “Where are you from?” I discuss how positionalities complicate the generally accepted power differentials in studying scientific fields in the context of “studying up,” where “up” comprises multiple, primarily contingent hierarchical locations.