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Accepted Paper:
Transforming Gendered Security Practices and Networks in Ethnographic Fieldwork
Laura Thurmann
(University of Manchester)
Anthropologists’ efforts to increase gendered safety during fieldwork have been conceptualized as a feminist movement rather than a matter of transforming security. In this paper, I am looking at security practices and networks in fieldwork through the lens of anthropological security studies.
Paper long abstract:
In the past decades, processes of transformation have shaped both global and local debates about the future of security. Development organizations working in the framework of the Security Sector Reform, debates about defunding US police forces following the Black Lives Matter movement, or feminist critique of police responses and legislation regarding sexualized violence are just a few examples of recent attempts to change security structures that have influenced global debates. What has been less visible are the ways in which anthropologists have equally engaged with questions of transforming security in their own discipline. In the wake of the #Metoo movement, an increasing number of researchers, initiatives and groups have started conversations about how to increase gendered safety for fieldworkers. So far, this has been conceptualized as a feminist movement rather than a matter of transforming security. In this paper, I am proposing a way of looking at gendered safety in fieldwork through the lens of anthropological security studies. By building up on concepts of security as networks of formal and informal actors (e.g. Diphoorn 2016; Göpfert 2012), I explain how researchers themselves perform security work during ethnographic fieldwork to prevent, mitigate, or deal with gendered risks. I examine the networks that researchers encounter or build both in their fieldsites and in their social and academic environment and how they contribute to gendered safety. My data is based on 12 months of PhD research on gendered security practices in fieldwork among German and UK anthropologists.