Paper short abstract:

This paper presents through several examples how learning to navigate a sexualised field as a long-term resident ethnographer in a Nigerian city contributed to gaining access to specific sites and to knowledge construction

Paper long abstract:

My ten years in a Nigerian city from 1980 to 1990 became after a few years back in Europe one extensive field, although I did not systematically document every moment of those 3650 days and nights. With hindsight, it would be no exaggeration to state that as a young single white woman the field was effectively sexualised given the gender relations that prevailed at the time. In this hetero-normative patriarchal society, men’s access to multiple partners whether in polygynous households or through relationships with “outside wives”, lovers or girlfriends was counterbalanced by women’s sway over domestic affairs and their strategies to secure economic autonomy by occupying top professional positions, engaging in business or/and building a house, for example. Children, especially boys, also played a role in securing both parents’ status and futures in different ways. This setting generated competition, rivalry and jealousy but also solidarity amongst women and, I suspect, also amongst men although I was not party in the same way to their relational dynamics. In this paper I wish to explore, through specific examples, how I navigated this complex territory in which status and hierarchy also played a major role. Indeed, almost all public endeavours to which I actively contributed in a professional capacity as university researcher-lecturer were tainted with implied sexual relations, playing into local conceptions of the specific roles that I was afforded.