Studying Education of Visual Impairment from Within: Reflexivity, Restrictions, and Institutional Control in Fieldwork
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54741/SSJAR/6.1.2026.323Keywords:
surveillance, knowledge, ethnographic fieldworkAbstract
This paper examines how looking, showing infrastructure, and gatekeeping influence knowledge production in Schools for the Blind in Odisha. The paper employs a methodological approach called Quasi Autoethnography to examine access restrictions, supervised interviews, and how transparency constructs disability education. Building on Foucault, Goffman, and Haraway, this paper demonstrates how knowledge production is influenced by who is visible in institutions, not just how one conducts research. As a low-vision ethnographer, this paper examines how being disabled shapes insider/outsider concerns and worries in institutions. Refusal, restriction, and supervised access illustrate how being disabled is made visible and kept safe through infrastructure. I connect this to disability anthropology, science and technology studies, and how invisible processes in institutions are key to ethnography.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Satyabrata Sahoo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Research Articles in 'Social Science Journal for Advanced Research' are Open Access articles published under the Creative Commons CC BY License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. This license allows you to share – copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format. Adapt – remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
