Fieldwork

This chapter describes where and how the author conducted her ethnography, including her methods (long-term participant observation, semi-structured and informal interviews, and textual analysis) and how she adapted them to suit the geography, loose organization, emerging themes, and sensitive political context of the London Salafi community. Over more than two years, she participated as fully as possible in the life of the community, attending religious lessons and social gatherings. The chapter ends with a vivid account of her fieldwork among a community under suspicion and reeling from being targeted by an undercover reporter who secretly filmed them for a 2008 documentary. The author reveals how as a white, non-Muslim researcher, she negotiated access to the community, gradually built up trust, and sought to balance close involvement and objective detachment in order to provide a first hand, richly detailed understanding of the women’s world.