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This article is a methodological discussion, in which I argue that to study complex phenomena such as culture and femicide calls for other approaches other than the dominant interview and survey studies. By their focus on the contextual, the interactional and the process itself, and by rejecting language as referential and transparent, ethno-informed approaches better recognize and capture this complexity. To see the interview as a social interactional event grounded in a world of common-sense thinking makes members of a society share a common stock of knowledge, or a social world and communicative understanding. This is particularly relevant in cross-cultural studies, in which we can no longer assume that members share such common-sense thinking. This makes activities such as asking questions and filling answers into categories problematic. We need to see how a phenomenon such as femicide, telling stories about it and our representations reflect the diversity of cultural forms. I will draw on secondary data to illustrate my arguments and their relevance.

A few years ago Centre of Development Studies at my Faculty, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, started an online Master's Programme in Development Management. The programme was implemented by a network of universities from the North (University of Agder/UiA) and the South (Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Uganda, Ghana) recruiting students from across the world. The evaluation is very positive characterising it as a big success. I will now look into one particular element of this study, teaching the qualitative methodology (QM) courses with a special focus on the South context. Each course QM included has been sectioned into modules based on a variety of students` activities including student-student and student-tutor/teacher interaction, plus a number of hand-ins across topics and formats. Evaluation of the students` performance is based on both online group activity and written material submitted either into the individual or the group portfolio. My focus is twofold. First, how did we teach qualitative methodology and how did that work? Second, what about the contemporary focus on neo-colonial methodology and our QM courses? In a wider perspective the study is part of foreign aid where higher education is a means to transfer competence to the South. As such this study works to enable and to empower people rather than being trapped in the old accusation of sustaining dependency (Asad 1973, Ryen 2000 and 2007a). This study then is embedded in a wider North-South debate and a highly relevant illustration of the potentials, success and hazards, inherit in teaching QM.

Editorial

Entering and staying on in the field or rather avoiding being kicked out are the two classic ethnographic challenges. The rather positivist nature of textbook guidance on dos and don'ts in fieldwork in general and in delicate issues in particular (for researchers` dilemmas in the field see Ryen 2002), tend to recommend a gentle, middle-class (rather female) interactional style. This gaze suffers from being both researcher-focused (cf.Fine 1994 on "Othering") and based on problematic pre-fixed identities nailing us to the role pair as researcher and key informant. As the introductory extract illustrates, it takes patience also to have an ethnographer "hanging around". This article deals with the credibility of qualitative research when accounting for or exploring how we do staying in the cross-cultural field and it asks how can we credibly explore the stamina that takes us further? If we accept fieldwork as social interaction, we need to bring the social (or the "inter") of it into the exploration of our puzzle. Membership categorisation device (MCD) offers to take us closer to understanding and piecing together our puzzle, but to better get at the events taking place in field interaction there is a need also to introduce the wider cultural context and the images available (or not) to members. In this way I recognise the ethnomethodological differentiation between topic and resource, but argue that when understandings and images are not necessarily culturally shared and collective, we also need to make problematic how members deal with the unavailability of shared images. In the conclusion I argue that the artful side of the local interpretive work in the field is closely entangled with whatever meanings or images are available for construction (in line with Gubrium and Holstein 1997:121). In cross-cultural contexts more than in others, this is particularly delicate because in such contexts images and experiences often do not connect and may lead to complications or even breakdown in communication (Ryen 2002). Mending or repair thus becomes another crucial phenomenon, itself complex, in the evolving field relations. The analysis thus pinpoints the artistry of members` local collaborative efforts accentuated when constrained by images or descriptions that do not connect across cultures. This makes stamina a joint effort, though itself an intricate, emergent phenomenon. Next I will briefly introduce a couple of classic works on working with key informants followed by a brief presentation of the analytic approaches to be applied to my data from East- Africa. Before concluding, I will comment on "wading the field" as reflected in the close exploration of the cross-cultural extracts.

The complexity of social relations in ethnographic fieldwork makes us rightly wonder how do we come to see what is ethical or not? Trust in cross-cultural research works well to explore this issue. I will compare two different treatments of the same linguistic practice from interaction with my main informant, an Asian in East-Africa, and argue that it is important to see the action-orientation of utterances designed to achieve particular interactional ends. Failure to do so may result in analytic claims based on incomplete understanding of data. Treating the informant's utterances as a passive medium for transmission of information, makes us vulnerable to the non-western criticism of western research in non-western contexts. Rather, the action orientation offers an alternative way that makes us see talk as designed to perform sequentially relevant actions. This approach safeguards us against premature interpretations of trust in cross-cultural research practice.

In recent years, "indigenous research" and "indigenous methods" have become prominent themes in the general field of qualitative methodology. These ideas and their implications raise serious questions for the wider conduct of social research. We will outline some of those ideas, subjecting them to scrutiny, and ultimately using them to question the rise of Romanticism in contemporary social methodology. We develop these ideas to question the contemporary emphasis on the personal and the experiential in current methodological commentary.

The main objective of this paper is to contribute to explaining the outstanding business success among the Asian diaspora in East Africa as compared to the native African population. Taking an actors's point of view, the business context is analysed against a theoretical background of alien entrepreneurship and a presentation of the history of Asians in the region. A main argument is that the alien entrepreneurs are in a better position to enact their business context in a manner favourable for success, based on ethnic resources such as kinship, education and price, mobility and communication and social networking. The main policy recommendations include mechanisms to improve information flows and networking capabilities of indigenous business people. (AAS/DÜI-ASDOK)

ABSTRACT
The main objective of this paper is to contribute to explaining the outstanding business success among the Asian diaspora in East Africa as compared to the native African population. Taking an actor's point of view, the business context is analysed against a theoretical background of alien entrepreneurship and a presentation of the history of Asians in the region. A main argument is that the alien entrepreneurs are in a better position to enact their business context in a manner favourable for success, based on ethnic resources such as kinship, education and pride, mobility and communication and social networking. The main policy recommendations include mechanisms to improve information flows and networking capabilities of indigenous business people.