Embodying the Field
A researcher’s reflections on power dynamics, positionality and the nature of research relationships
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.v8i1.27Keywords:
embodiment, ethnography, Muslim women, positionality, power dynamics, South AfricaAbstract
This article focuses on the various ways in which research relationships evolve and are negotiated by paying particular attention to the embodied nature of ethnographic research. By drawing on my own research experience of interviewing South African Muslim women about sexual dynamics, I critically engage debates concerning power dynamics in research relationships as well as researcher positionality. I argue that researchers should pay increasing attention to the multiple ways in which doing research always is an embodied practice. I present three case studies that highlight the complex ways in which research encounters speak to notions of intimacy, vulnerability and affect. In this way I argue that research encounters forge primary human relationalities that are marked by moments of convergence, conflict and despondency.
Downloads
Download data is not yet available.
References
Alcoff, Linda. 1995. “The Problem of Speaking for Others,” in J. Roof and R. Wiegman, eds, Who Can Speak? Authority and Critical Identity. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 97–119.
Arendell, T. 1997. “Reflections on the Researcher-Researched Relationship: A Woman Interviewing Men,” Qualitative Sociology, 20, 341–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1024727316052
Bakare-Yusuf, B. 1999. “The Economy of Violence: Black Bodies and the Unspeakable Terror,” in J. Price and M. Shildrick, eds, Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader. New York: Routledge, 311–24.
Barlas, Asma. 2002. “Believing Women” in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Best, Amy L. 2003. “Doing Race in the Context of Feminist Interviewing: Constructing Whiteness through Talk,” Qualitative Inquiry, 9.6, 895–914. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1077800403254891
Bhavnani, Kum Kum. 1988. “Empowerment and Social Research,” TEXT, 8.1, 41–51.
Bhavnani, Kum Kum. 1994. “Tracing the Contours: Feminist Research and Feminist Objectivity,” in H. Afshar and M. Maynard, eds, The Dynamics of “Race” and Gender: Some Feminist Interventions. London: Taylor & Francis, 26–40.
Boonzaier, Floretta. 2008. “‘If the Man Says You Must Sit, Then You Must Sit’: The Relational Construction of Woman Abuse: Gender, Subjectivity and Violence,” Feminism and Psychology, 18.2, 183–206. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0959353507088266
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Brown, Peter. 1988. The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press.
Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that Matter. London: Routledge.
Bynum, Caroline Walker. 1991. Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. New York: Zone Books.
Callaway, H. 1992. “Ethnography and Experience: Gender Implications in Fieldwork and Texts,” in J. Okely and H. Callaway, eds, Anthropology and Autobiography. London: Routledge, 29–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203450536_chapter_2
Coakley, Sarah, ed. 1997. Religion and the Body. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Csordas, Thomas, ed. 1994. Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Csordas, Thomas. 2011. “Cultural Phenomenology: Embodiment: Agency, Sexual Difference and Illness,” in F. E. Mascia-Lees, ed., A Companion to the Anthropology of the Body and Embodiment. UK: Blackwell, 137–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781444340488.ch8
DeVault, M. 1999. Liberating Methods: Feminism and Social Research. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Erasmus, Zimitri. 2000. “Recognition through Pleasure, Recognition through Violence: Gendered Coloured Subjectivities in South Africa,” Current Sociology, 48.3, 71–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0011392100048003006
Featherstone, Mike, and Bryan S. Turner. 1991. The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory. London: Sage.
Featherstone, Mike, and Bryan S. Turner. 1995. “Body and Society: An Introduction,” Body and Society 1, 1-12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1357034X95001001001
Fine, M., and L. Weis. 1998. The Unknown City: The Lives of Poor and Working Class Young Adults. Boston: Beacon.
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Allan Sheridan. London: Allen Lane.
Gilliat-Ray, Sophie. 2010. “Body-Works and Fieldwork: Research with British Muslim Chaplains,” Culture and Religion, 11.4, 413–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2010.527615
Grosz, E. 1994. Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Grosz, E. 1995. Space, Time and Perversion: the Politics of Bodies. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Haraway, Donna. 1988. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” Feminist Studies, 14.3, 575–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3178066
Haraway, Donna. 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse™:Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge.
Harding, Sandra. 1987. Feminism and Methodology: Social Science Issues. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Hastrup, K. 1992. “Writing Ethnography: State of the Art,” in J. Okely and H. Callaway, eds, Anthropology and Autobiography. London: Routledge, 116–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203450536_chapter_7
Hellawell, David. 2006. “Inside-Out: Analysis of the Insider-Outsider Concept as a Heuristic Device to Develop Reflexivity in Students Doing Qualitative Research,” Teaching in Higher Education, 11.4, 483–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13562510600874292
Jaschok, Maria and Jingjun, Shui. 2000. “‘Outside Within’: Speaking to Excursions Across Cultures,” Feminist Theory, 1.1, 33–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/14647000022229056
Kristeva, Julia. 1991. Strangers to Ourselves. New York: Columbia University Press.
Mahmood, Saba. 2001. “Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival,” Cultural Anthropology, 16.2: 202–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/can.2001.16.2.202
Mama, Amina. 1995. Beyond the Masks: Race, Gender, and Subjectivity. London: Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203405499
McLaren, Margaret. 2002. Feminism, Foucault, and Embodied Subjectivity. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Mellor, Philip, and Chris Shilling. 1997. Re-Forming the Body: Religion, Community and Modernity. London: Sage.
Mellor, Philip, and Chris Shilling. 2010. “Body Pedagogics and the Religious Habitus: A New Direction for the Sociological Study of Religion,” Religion, 4.1, 2–38.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Routledge and Kegal Paul.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1965. The Structure of Behaviour. London: Methuen.
Minh-ha, T. T. 1989. Women, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 1991. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” in C. T. Mohanty, A. Russo and L. Torres, eds, Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 51–80.
Naples, Nancy A. 2003. Feminism and Method: Ethnography, Discourse Analysis, and Activist Research. New York: Routledge.
Oakley, A. 1981. “Interviewing Women: A Contradiction in Terms,” in H. Roberts, ed., Doing Feminist Research. London; Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 30–62.
Patai, D. 1991. “U.S. Academics and Third World Women: Is Ethical Research Possible?,” in S. B. Gluck and D. Patai, eds, Women’s Worlds: The Feminist Practice of Oral History. New York: Routledge, 137–53.
Price, J., and M. Shildrick, eds. 1999. Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader. New York: Routledge.
Razavi, Shahra. 1992. “Fieldwork in a Familiar Setting: The Role of Politics at a National, Community and Household Levels,” in S. Devereux and J. Hoddinott, eds, Fieldwork in Developing Countries. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 152–63.
Roberts, Helen. 1981. Doing Feminist Research. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Schimmel, Annemarie. 1997. My Soul is a Woman: The Feminine in Islam. New York: Continuum.
Semonovitch, K., and DeRoo, N., eds. 2010. Merleau-Ponty at the Limits of Art, Religion, and Perception. London and New York: Continuum.
Sherif, Bahira. 2001. “The Ambiguity of Boundaries in the Fieldwork Experience: Establishing Rapport and Negotiating Insider/Outsider Status,” Qualitative Inquiry, 7.4, 436–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/107780040100700403
Stanley, Liz, ed. 1990. Feminist Praxis: Research, Theory and Epistemology in Feminist Sociology. London and New York: Routledge.
Thomas, Carol. 1999. Female Forms: Experiencing and Understanding Disability. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Visweswaran, Kamala. 1994. Fictions of Feminist Ethnography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Williams, Brackette F. 1996. “Skinfolk, Not Kinfolk: Comparative Reflections on the Identity of Participant-Observation in Two Field Situations,” in Diane L. Wolf, ed., Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 72–95.
Wolf, Diane L., ed. 1996. Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Arendell, T. 1997. “Reflections on the Researcher-Researched Relationship: A Woman Interviewing Men,” Qualitative Sociology, 20, 341–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1024727316052
Bakare-Yusuf, B. 1999. “The Economy of Violence: Black Bodies and the Unspeakable Terror,” in J. Price and M. Shildrick, eds, Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader. New York: Routledge, 311–24.
Barlas, Asma. 2002. “Believing Women” in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Best, Amy L. 2003. “Doing Race in the Context of Feminist Interviewing: Constructing Whiteness through Talk,” Qualitative Inquiry, 9.6, 895–914. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1077800403254891
Bhavnani, Kum Kum. 1988. “Empowerment and Social Research,” TEXT, 8.1, 41–51.
Bhavnani, Kum Kum. 1994. “Tracing the Contours: Feminist Research and Feminist Objectivity,” in H. Afshar and M. Maynard, eds, The Dynamics of “Race” and Gender: Some Feminist Interventions. London: Taylor & Francis, 26–40.
Boonzaier, Floretta. 2008. “‘If the Man Says You Must Sit, Then You Must Sit’: The Relational Construction of Woman Abuse: Gender, Subjectivity and Violence,” Feminism and Psychology, 18.2, 183–206. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0959353507088266
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Brown, Peter. 1988. The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press.
Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that Matter. London: Routledge.
Bynum, Caroline Walker. 1991. Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. New York: Zone Books.
Callaway, H. 1992. “Ethnography and Experience: Gender Implications in Fieldwork and Texts,” in J. Okely and H. Callaway, eds, Anthropology and Autobiography. London: Routledge, 29–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203450536_chapter_2
Coakley, Sarah, ed. 1997. Religion and the Body. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Csordas, Thomas, ed. 1994. Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Csordas, Thomas. 2011. “Cultural Phenomenology: Embodiment: Agency, Sexual Difference and Illness,” in F. E. Mascia-Lees, ed., A Companion to the Anthropology of the Body and Embodiment. UK: Blackwell, 137–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781444340488.ch8
DeVault, M. 1999. Liberating Methods: Feminism and Social Research. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Erasmus, Zimitri. 2000. “Recognition through Pleasure, Recognition through Violence: Gendered Coloured Subjectivities in South Africa,” Current Sociology, 48.3, 71–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0011392100048003006
Featherstone, Mike, and Bryan S. Turner. 1991. The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory. London: Sage.
Featherstone, Mike, and Bryan S. Turner. 1995. “Body and Society: An Introduction,” Body and Society 1, 1-12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1357034X95001001001
Fine, M., and L. Weis. 1998. The Unknown City: The Lives of Poor and Working Class Young Adults. Boston: Beacon.
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Allan Sheridan. London: Allen Lane.
Gilliat-Ray, Sophie. 2010. “Body-Works and Fieldwork: Research with British Muslim Chaplains,” Culture and Religion, 11.4, 413–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2010.527615
Grosz, E. 1994. Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Grosz, E. 1995. Space, Time and Perversion: the Politics of Bodies. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Haraway, Donna. 1988. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” Feminist Studies, 14.3, 575–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3178066
Haraway, Donna. 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse™:Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge.
Harding, Sandra. 1987. Feminism and Methodology: Social Science Issues. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Hastrup, K. 1992. “Writing Ethnography: State of the Art,” in J. Okely and H. Callaway, eds, Anthropology and Autobiography. London: Routledge, 116–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203450536_chapter_7
Hellawell, David. 2006. “Inside-Out: Analysis of the Insider-Outsider Concept as a Heuristic Device to Develop Reflexivity in Students Doing Qualitative Research,” Teaching in Higher Education, 11.4, 483–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13562510600874292
Jaschok, Maria and Jingjun, Shui. 2000. “‘Outside Within’: Speaking to Excursions Across Cultures,” Feminist Theory, 1.1, 33–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/14647000022229056
Kristeva, Julia. 1991. Strangers to Ourselves. New York: Columbia University Press.
Mahmood, Saba. 2001. “Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival,” Cultural Anthropology, 16.2: 202–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/can.2001.16.2.202
Mama, Amina. 1995. Beyond the Masks: Race, Gender, and Subjectivity. London: Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203405499
McLaren, Margaret. 2002. Feminism, Foucault, and Embodied Subjectivity. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Mellor, Philip, and Chris Shilling. 1997. Re-Forming the Body: Religion, Community and Modernity. London: Sage.
Mellor, Philip, and Chris Shilling. 2010. “Body Pedagogics and the Religious Habitus: A New Direction for the Sociological Study of Religion,” Religion, 4.1, 2–38.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Routledge and Kegal Paul.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1965. The Structure of Behaviour. London: Methuen.
Minh-ha, T. T. 1989. Women, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 1991. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” in C. T. Mohanty, A. Russo and L. Torres, eds, Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 51–80.
Naples, Nancy A. 2003. Feminism and Method: Ethnography, Discourse Analysis, and Activist Research. New York: Routledge.
Oakley, A. 1981. “Interviewing Women: A Contradiction in Terms,” in H. Roberts, ed., Doing Feminist Research. London; Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 30–62.
Patai, D. 1991. “U.S. Academics and Third World Women: Is Ethical Research Possible?,” in S. B. Gluck and D. Patai, eds, Women’s Worlds: The Feminist Practice of Oral History. New York: Routledge, 137–53.
Price, J., and M. Shildrick, eds. 1999. Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader. New York: Routledge.
Razavi, Shahra. 1992. “Fieldwork in a Familiar Setting: The Role of Politics at a National, Community and Household Levels,” in S. Devereux and J. Hoddinott, eds, Fieldwork in Developing Countries. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 152–63.
Roberts, Helen. 1981. Doing Feminist Research. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Schimmel, Annemarie. 1997. My Soul is a Woman: The Feminine in Islam. New York: Continuum.
Semonovitch, K., and DeRoo, N., eds. 2010. Merleau-Ponty at the Limits of Art, Religion, and Perception. London and New York: Continuum.
Sherif, Bahira. 2001. “The Ambiguity of Boundaries in the Fieldwork Experience: Establishing Rapport and Negotiating Insider/Outsider Status,” Qualitative Inquiry, 7.4, 436–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/107780040100700403
Stanley, Liz, ed. 1990. Feminist Praxis: Research, Theory and Epistemology in Feminist Sociology. London and New York: Routledge.
Thomas, Carol. 1999. Female Forms: Experiencing and Understanding Disability. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Visweswaran, Kamala. 1994. Fictions of Feminist Ethnography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Williams, Brackette F. 1996. “Skinfolk, Not Kinfolk: Comparative Reflections on the Identity of Participant-Observation in Two Field Situations,” in Diane L. Wolf, ed., Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 72–95.
Wolf, Diane L., ed. 1996. Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Published
2013-10-29
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Hoel, N. (2013). Embodying the Field: A researcher’s reflections on power dynamics, positionality and the nature of research relationships. Fieldwork in Religion, 8(1), 27-49. https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.v8i1.27
