Paper short abstract:

This paper considers how interlocuters make sense of the ethnographer. Through an ethnographic detailing of the different terms used by interlocuters to address the ethnographer, this paper shows how there exists not one, but multiple power relationships between the ethnographer and the field.

Paper long abstract:

A lot has been said in anthropology about how ethnographers ‘make sense’ of the field(s); however, how do interlocuters make sense of the ethnographer? In this paper, based on ongoing fieldwork at a family planning clinic in northwest India, I explore this question by analysing how my often confusing, puzzling, unusual and yet persistent presence at a clinic is perceived, understood and made sense of by different interlocuters: staff members, doctors, health workers, and the women and families visiting the clinic.

In particular, I will share through ethnographic vignettes the four terms used at the clinic to address me: “madam;” “didi” (sister in Hindi); “sister” (nursing staff); “chhori” (daughter/young girl in Hindi). Within this, I will primarily explore how the usage of these terms varies across different interlocuters based on their on their own social locations, status and position at the clinic, and how that in turn mediates their relationship with me. Alongside, I will also reflect upon how I myself address the different interlocuters.

Through an exploration of these different forms of addresses, this paper aims to show how there exists not one, but multiple power relationships between the ethnographer and the field. The ethnographer, by immersing herself in the field, invariably becomes a part of the existing power dynamics within the field and amongst the interlocuters. This means that the ethnographer finds herself managing and navigating a range of varying, overlapping, contradicting and changing social relationships, all closely linked to how the interlocuters make sense of her presence.