This Second Edition summarizes the state of the art of gender issues in fieldwork both in anthropology and sociology. Warren shows how the researcher's gender affects both the fieldwork relationships and the production of ethnography. The authors focus is more empirical than theoretical; using literature on gender and ethnography, together with their own experiences as women ethnographers, they focus on ways in which researchers represent these experiences through narrative.
Researchers frequently experience sexualized interactions, sexual objectification, and harassment as they conduct fieldwork. These experiences are often left out of ethnographers’ “tales from the field” and remain unaddressed within qualitative literature. Harassed argues that the androcentric, racist, and colonialist epistemological foundations of ethnographic methodology contribute to the silence surrounding sexual harassment and other forms of violence. Rebecca Hanson and Patricia Richards challenge readers to recognize how these attitudes put researchers at risk, further the solitude experienced by researchers, lead others to question the validity of their work, and, in turn, negatively impact the construction of ethnographic knowledge. To improve methodological training, data collection, and knowledge produced by all researchers, Harassed advocates for an embodied approach to ethnography that reflexively engages with the ways in which researchers’ bodies shape the knowledge they produce. By challenging these assumptions, the authors offer an opportunity for researchers, advisors, and educators to consider the multiple ways in which good ethnographic research can be conducted. Beyond challenging current methodological training and mentorship, Harassed opens discussions about sexual harassment and violence in the social sciences in general.
This book provides new insights into an intense and long-standing debate on women, gender, and masculinity with an explicit focus on ethnographic writing. The six contributors to this book investigate and discuss the multiple connections between ethnographic writing and gender in both the history of anthropology and contemporary anthropology, underlining problems, potentialities, stereotypes, experiments, continuities, changes, and challenges. Building on a prologue by two Malinowski grandchildren and an exploration of the role that Bronislaw Malinowski’s first wife, Elsie Masson, played in his literary presentation, the anthropologists collected here problematize writing gender and gendered writing in ethnography, revealing how these twin themes touch the history of the discipline itself and the classics of anthropology. Has the legacy of Writing Culture and Women Writing Culture obviated the need to consider gender in writing? Or could it be that the very mechanics of ethnographic writing are still imbued with hidden gendered divisions of labor? Following the editors’ extensive overview of the question, the contributing authors tackle gender and ethnographic writing from various vantages: with a view to the past, but also to the influence of previous feminist critiques in the present, and with accounts of the issues they themselves have faced and the solutions they have devised.
Through the innovative methodology of asking them to record their experiences on videotape, this book offers an evocative and fascinating cross-cultural exploration into the everyday lives of a number of teenage girls from their own broad social, cultural and ethnic perspectives. The use of the video camera by the girls themselves reveals their exploration and experimentation with possible identities, highlighting their awareness that the self is not ready made but rather constituted in the process of continuous performance. The result is an active self-conscious exploration of the continuous "art" of self-making. Through their play, the teenagers are shown to strategically test out various possibilities, while keeping such explorations within the bounds of what is acceptable and permissible in their own micro-cultural worlds. The resulting material challenges previous findings in those feminist and youth anthropological studies based on too narrow a concept of class, ethnicity or populist approaches to culture.
Discusses the role of gender in social research in the field, focusing on the researcher's experience of his or her own gender and that of the respondent.
Draws on eighteen months of research in a racially diverse working-class high school to explore the meaning of masculinity and the social practices associated with it, discussing how homophobia is used to enforce gender conformity.
Writing in the wake of neoliberalism, where human rights and social justice have increasingly been subordinated to proliferating “consumer choices” and ideals of market justice, contributors to this collection argue that feminist ethnographers are in a key position to reassert the central feminist connections between theory, methods, and activism. Together, we suggest avenues for incorporating methodological innovations, collaborative analysis, and collective activism in our scholarly projects. What are the possibilities (and challenges) that exist for feminist ethnography 25 years after initial debates emerged in this field about reflexivity, objectivity, reductive individualism, and the social relevance of activist scholarship? How can feminist ethnography intensify efforts towards social justice in the current political and economic climate? This collection continues a crucial dialog about feminist activist ethnography in the 21st century—at the intersection of engaged feminist research and activism in the service of the organizations, people, communities, and feminist issues we study.
Gendered Lives takes a regional approach to examine gender issues from an anthropological perspective with a focus on globalization and intersectionality. Chapters present contributors' ethnographic research, contextualizing their findings within four geographic regions: Latin America, the Caribbean, South Asia, and the Global North. Each regional section begins with an overview of the broader historical, social, and gendered contexts, which situate the regions within larger global linkages. These introductions also feature short project/people profiles that highlight the work of community leaders or non-governmental organizations active in gender-related issues. Each research-based chapter begins with a chapter overview and learning objectives and closes with discussion questions and resources for further exploration. This modular, regional approach allows instructors to select the regions and cases they want to use in their courses. While they can be used separately, the chapters are connected through the book's central themes of globalization and intersectionality. An OER version of this course is freely available thanks to the generous support of SUNY OER Services. Access the book online at https://milneopentextbooks.org/gendered-lives-global-issues/.
Provides a hands-on approach to learning feminist research methods. This book provides examples of the range of research questions feminists engage with issues of gender inequality, violence against women, body image issues, as well as issues of discrimination of "other/ed" marginalized groups.
