Contribution short abstract:

The paper addresses methodological challenges and explores how to uncover subtle practices of using ethnic categories in conversations during working meetings at a rural hospital in Kazakhstan.

Contribution long abstract:

In my paper I discuss the notion of membership (ten Have 2002) and the role of fulfilling Garfinkel's “unique adequacy requirement of methods” (Meier zu Verl / Meyer / Oberzaucher 2023) in conducting anthropological research in my home region, Central Asia. How does being a member – familiar with the cultural environment and equipped with local knowledge, particularly language proficiency – enhance understanding of how actors use ethnic categories in everyday language? Regarding the unique adequacy requirement of the methods, I address several methodological issues: 1. the importance of balancing cultural proximity and strangeness, e.g., due to professional ties; 2. strategies for achieving analytical distance to interpret culturally shaped practices of ethnicization, employing conversation analysis as a key method.

The pragmatic meaning of such practices is usually seen but unnoticed by members deeply involved in the dramas of everyday life. The same applies to researchers who are – or become – members of the society in which ethnographic fieldwork takes place. The discussion draws on my long-term ethnographic fieldwork in a rural hospital in Kazakhstan, where I used videography (Meyer 2018) to capture everyday activities in the hospital. Relationships of reciprocal trust were a crucial aspect of this fieldwork, a process significantly supported by my daughter and husband. Not only did they accompany me during the fieldwork, but they also actively contributed to the collection and analysis of various types of data, highlighting the significant role of family ties in the production of anthropological knowledge.

Contribution short abstract:

Ethnographic fieldwork as an embodied practice is influenced by a researcher’s pregnancy and various sociocultural understandings of pregnancy and birth. Risk discourse, medicalization and the commoning of pregnant and foetal bodies directly affect ethnographic knowledge production.

Contribution long abstract:

Ethnographic fieldwork is an embodied practice that is influenced by intersectional identities and the researcher’s body. It is therefore not surprising that pregnancies and births affect the course of fieldwork and the ethnographic methodology applied. For example, the sometimes newly ascribed identity and social role of “mother” has a direct impact on social interaction and the overall research process.

In the limited literature on the topic of pregnancy and fieldwork, ethnographers discuss how pregnancies and births affect the planning and structuring of research processes and thus the design and implementation of research projects. For example, they describe how medical routines are often taken into account in these plans, but that these routines are also frequently reinterpreted and questioned. Risk discourse is central in the policing also of pregnant ethnographers, related to the medicalization of pregnancy and the commoning of pregnant and foetal bodies.

In this talk I discuss pregnancy in the context of ethnographic fieldwork and how different understandings and definitions of pregnancy and birth influence ethnographic field research. I argue that this is particularly the case when the researcher is pregnant, but also when breastfeeding and/or is accompanied by a toddler. Normative ideas and expectations of pregnant people (e.g. with regard to their mobility, social interaction and nutrition) are also applied to researchers, and may be adapted or questioned by them, with varying effects on the research.

Contribution short abstract:

In this paper I will show how anthropologists' kinship has been historically marginalised and how this affects anthropological knowledge production and ethnographic writing practices to this day.

Contribution long abstract:

Kinship studies became a core area of anthropology in the early 20th century. While anthropologists studied kinship and sexuality in different societies, they rarely reflected on their own family relationships. In this paper I will show how anthropologists' kinship has been historically marginalised and how this affects anthropological knowledge production and ethnographic writing practices to this day. Even after it has become commonplace to reflect on the positionality and relationality of the researcher in the field, reflections on anthropologists' marital status, family relationships and sexuality, and the importance of accompanied research, remain understudied and marginalised. I will discuss the reasons for this and argue why these issues need more attention, particularly as academic research becomes increasingly transnational. Reflections on family relations and the influence of researchers' spouses, children, parents and other relatives on academic knowledge production are important and enriching for epistemological and methodological discussions in the discipline and beyond. This perspective is essential and much needed to advance the discussion of the entanglement of the private and the professional in anthropological research.

Contribution short abstract:

The presentation explores how my positioning as a parent and parenting itself shaped the epistemology and methodology of my doctoral research on the infrastructural dimension of food sovereignty practices in remote Arctic settlements.

Contribution long abstract:

Many anthropologists who have taken their children to their field sites have already pointed out that the presence of a child in the field makes them focus on specific topics or pushes them to explore certain subjects. In particular, they emphasised that the interaction of their children with informants in the field led to a deeper understanding of local norms, conflict culture, gender, family relations, kinship, maternity and childcare, childbearing, childhood, perceptions of ethnicity in the communities being studied (Brown and Dreby 2013; Butler and Turner 1987; Cornet and Blumenfield 2016:5; Cupples and Kindon 2003:224; Farrelly et al. 2014; Flinn et al. 1998; Korpela et al. 2016; Schrijvers 1993). But what about infrastructure, in particular, transport infrastructure? "Will a researcher's children allow or restrict access to (this sort of) specific information" (Cornet and Blumenfield 2015:3)? Being in the writing phase, I ask myself, how my positioning as a parent and parenting itself impacted my doctoral research devoted to the infrastructural dimension of food sovereignty practices in remote Arctic settlements? Or, to put it more sharply, is there room for the anthropologist's children to explore such a topic in the harsh Arctic environment? Building on my personal experience of doing accompanied fieldwork in remote Chukotkan settlements (the Russian Arctic), I analyse how the presence of my children shaped the focus of the research, provided certain ways of doing research and thinking, and imposed ethical questions.

Contribution short abstract:

Being accompanied by family members such as small children during fieldwork “at the home place” brings challenges and opens up possibilities. On condition that fieldwork activities are suitable to the life with children, they can make fieldwork and knowledge production more diverse and enriching.

Contribution long abstract:

This paper seeks to explore what it means to do field research “at the home place” being accompanied by family members. It refers to the experiences of a female cultural anthropologist whose previous research was characterized by taking place “far away”. In the framework of a new research project about sports and migration in Germany, “the home place” becomes the field. For researchers with small children doing research “at home” opens up possibilities and brings challenges. (As other working parents) researchers with children depend on social infrastructure as kindergarten and schools as well as social networks like friends or other family members in their daily life. Staying at the local place signifies that researcher can make use of established structures and networks which is extremely helpful. However, it also means that other (non-)academic duties like teaching or administrative tasks continue parallel to field activities and care work. Doing fieldwork in sports contexts accompanied by small children also signifies to evaluate the form of participation in the field in order to make it suitable to the research topic and to a life with children. Being accompanied by family members can open “new doors” and make possible other forms of participative fieldwork, for example through the active participation of family members. Thus, it might allow the gain of particular, worthful knowledge. Being accompanied during fieldwork “at home” changes the parameters of the research, but it can bring an enriching diverse perspective to the anthropological debates.

Contribution short abstract:

This paper examines the relationship between accompanied research and the relationships produced in the field. It focuses on active fatherhood and the interactions it affords with other men.

Contribution long abstract:

In many regions, men doing fieldwork achieve access to knowledge and activities through socializing with other men. In patriarchal settings, these bonding interactions are often marked by rituals involving drinking, dining, smoking, and specific linguistic styles. The presence of a child in the field alters this dynamic, affording new forms of socializing and, at times, different interlocutors altogether. Based on fieldwork in China, this chapter describes access to fieldsites and the registers formed within fieldsites through the presence of my daughter. While fatherhood in the field limited my capacity to partake in some male-dominated activities—thereby preventing me from engaging with gatekeepers—it also allows new opportunities for conversation regarding parenting activities, education, inter-cultural differences, and gender dynamics. Overall, fatherhood in the field nullifies many rituals of masculinity while prompting interactions where fatherhood—as a social role and les through with to view the world—becomes dominant.

Contribution short abstract:

Through our patchwork experiences of accompanied research, we question the concept of ‘field’ in relation to our making of ‘home’. To avoid the dichotomy ‘home’-‘field’, we propose to speak of ‘research experiences’, acknowledging the diverse immersive and intersubjective ethnographic practices.

Contribution long abstract:

Affective ties are central in ethnographic knowledge production and, in recent decades, more and more anthropologists overtly recognize their emotional, social and political positions, involvements and entanglements in the contexts of their ethnographic research. However, the real working and living conditions of anthropologists, as well as their familiar entanglements and accompanied research experiences still occupy a marginal position in anthropological issues, being mainly relegated to methodological discussions. Despite its marginality, accompanied ethnographic research has deep impacts on knowledge production, both epistemologically and in terms of the researcher’s positionality.

Through the practice of herstorying, that is to care for our stories that complexify research experiences and ‘make openings for new kinds of stories to tell’ (Yates-Doerr 2020:240), and the concept of patchwork ethnography (Günel and Watanabe 2024), that recognizes the multiple limits, commitments and entanglements of anthropologists and their research projects, we question the concept of ‘field’ in relation to our making of ‘home’. The practice of ‘fieldwork’ lies at the core of ethnography and builds on the concept of ‘field’ as opposed to ‘home’, a dichotomy that persists also in literature on accompanied research. Following D’Amico-Samuels (1997), we propose to avoid the term ‘field’ and to speak instead of ‘research experiences’. These acknowledge the different immersive, interactive and intersubjective ethnographic practices taking place in anthropological work, without evoking images of difference and locality and escaping the disciplining function of the term ‘field’. ‘Research experiences’ do not dismiss the key anthropological contributions of an immersive, interactive, intersubjective method based on experience.

Contribution short abstract:

This paper discusses perspectives of color on relational ethnographic research with and without "family" and its potentially (un)common meanings.

Contribution long abstract:

While in recent publications on ethnographic research and positionality, the researcher’s engendered body (Hanson & Richards 2019; Kloß 2017), matters of security and mental health during research (Thurmann [forthcoming]), and even single parenthood (Ghodsee 2009) have become more prominent topics. In literature on accompanied research, narratives of color (Tahir 2024) continue to be hardly found; even less so queer of color perspectives. Thus, this paper engages the reflexive practice of „invading ethnography“ (Adjepong 2019) to enrich accompanied ethnographic research theory and methods with a queer of color perspective. Drawing on my ethnographic research experiences as a queer mother of color with queer and trans communities in Lagos, Abuja, and Ilorin, Nigeria, I promote Adjepong’s (2019) „invading“ approach to disrupt normative assumptions about the multiple positionalities brought to and encountered in research environments. Invading ethnography not only “disrupts normative ethnographic narratives”, but provides them with „language through which to grapple with discomfort and marginality“, therefore a tool that assists in articulating the engendered and relational body in research environments.