This article offers a reflection on a certain variant of broadening the position of “being inside” with some “buts,” or through “within but.” Drawing on my field experience in the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada, I discuss the context-dependent, fluid and labile insiderness and the case of using a researcher’s embodied distinctions (senses, ethnicity, class) in the research site created by the fieldwork participants, and not the researcher him/herself. My considerations are embedded with the dialectics (not opposition) of the insider–outsider and point to the contextual “nativeness” and “strangeness” of the researcher. I also discuss the fluidity and contextuality of a researcher’s field familiarity, as well as when s/he conducts research in cooperation with “their own people,” as well as circumstances and factors that transform this familiarity into strangeness. I argue that the latter, instead of being an obstacle or barrier in the research, is a beneficial and mind-opening ethnographic tool.

本文提供了一种关于用一些“但”或通过“在但”来扩大“在里面”的位置的某种变体的思考。借鉴我在加拿大的乌克兰侨民的实地经验，我讨论了依赖于背景的、流动的和不稳定的内在性，以及在实地调查参与者创建的研究站点中使用研究人员的具体区别（感官、种族、阶级）的案例，以及不是研究人员他/她自己。我的考虑嵌入了局内人与局外人的辩证法（而非对立），并指向研究人员的语境“本土性”和“陌生性”。我还讨论了研究人员熟悉的领域的流动性和背景性，以及她/他何时与“他们自己的人，”以及将这种熟悉变成陌生的环境和因素。我认为后者不是研究中的障碍或障碍，而是一种有益的和开放的人种学工具。