This chapter reflects on different aspects of identity in relation to fieldwork and interviews in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, in 2013 and 2014. In 2011– 12, the Yemeni rose in peaceful protests that eventually destabilized Yemen to the point where civil war seemed not just possible but imminent. In this context, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)— spearheaded by Saudi Arabia— and the United Nations intervened, formulated a deal that forced the president of 33 years, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to step down in return for immunity. Yet, whereas the deal temporarily helped Yemen avoid full-blown civil war, the economy as well as the security situation kept deteriorating in 2013– 14. In September 2014, the Houthis, a group that has a long history of marginalization and armed resistance against the central state, took control of Sana’a, assisted by the former president Saleh.

The crumbling political transition and a violent takeover of the capital by an armed militia formed an important backdrop to my interviews with politicians, tribal leaders, activists, analysts and civil servants who all had stakes in the political transition. The gradual collapse of security also meant that most internationals left Yemen and those who remained had limited possibilities of individual movement. However, I was a doctoral student without formal links to any international organization operating inside Yemen, so I had fewer constraints. Instead, I relied on personal contacts, built through previous visits to Yemen, for risk assessments, practical advice and access to key informants. This strategy of relying on a personal network had practical consequences, for example related to accommodation and transportation, but it also affected which meetings I was able to schedule as well as how I was seen by interviewees and, consequently, the data I was able to access.

Ethnographic researchers are encouraged to reflect upon how their identity influences which questions are asked and how the answers are interpreted. The notion that knowledge is positional assumes that the researcher's descriptive characteristics such as gender and ethnicity as well as ascribed aspects of the researcher's identity based on appearance or behaviour play a role in framing the research and its outcomes (Godbole, 2014; Rinita and Lunn, 2014: 96).