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Accepted Paper:
Fieldwork as a Site of Violence and Care: On Ethnography and #MeToo in Anthropology
Anika Jugović Spajić
(University of Pittsburgh)
Through a feminist reflection of my experiences with sexual harassment in the field, I investigate the ways in which methodological and epistemological innovations and inquiries happen in spaces where vulnerable observers conduct their research and perform their academic work.
Paper Abstract:
In this paper, I reflect on my experience of sexual harassment in the field, following feminist interventions which state that starting with our own subjectivities in the context of our fields of study presents an important epistemic maneuver and adds to a more responsible knowledge production (Murphy 2015). The illusio (Bourdieu 1990) of the anthropological profession and ethnographic fieldwork has been reproducing the old model of white supremacist capitalist patriarchal research practices. Establishing rapport and friendships with our interlocutors after-hours and in private spaces has been the gold standard for, as Renato Rosaldo (1994) called it, “deep hanging out”. Such practices are not just commonly unavailable for women, disabled academics, BIPOC researchers, and queer individuals, they are also often dangerous, putting them/us at risk of bodily harm, including sexual assault. A consequence of this is that our methodological and epistemological training becomes in part unusable and untenable for researchers who are not white cis heterosexual men. I investigate the ways in which methodological innovations and inquiries happen in spaces where vulnerable observers conduct their research and perform their academic work.