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Paper short abstract

This paper examines gendered discomfort as an ethical and methodological condition of ethnographic fieldwork. Drawing on autoethnography in Vaishnava institutions in North-East India, it asks how sustained discomfort shapes access, knowledge production, and epistemic inequality in the field.

Paper long abstract

This paper reflects on discomfort as an ethical and methodological condition of ethnographic fieldwork, drawing on autoethnographic engagement with Vaishnava religious institutions in the North-East India. Conducting fieldwork as a female researcher in a predominantly masculine religious landscape generates sustained forms of unease shaped by gendered hierarchies of access and authority. In such spaces, where female presence is marginal, I reflect on my experiences of discomfort not as obstacles to be resolved, but how discomfort becomes an ongoing condition shaping the rhythms of fieldwork for a female researcher. Discomfort emerges when one fails to access certain ritual spaces and information owing to their gender, through patronising assumptions about a woman’s inability to understand religion, and in the vigilance required to navigate living arrangements and field sites where her presence is subject to constant surveillance and scrutiny. Experiences such as incessant phone calls/messages framed as “logistical coordination” from potential interlocuters or expectations of her availability from the community are often normalised as part of doing fieldwork, even as they demand continuous emotional and ethical negotiation. Under institutional pressures to complete fieldwork within fixed timelines, such unease is frequently managed through practices of self-silencing, self-censorship, and denial. These conditions raise a broader methodological question: whether gendered discomfort produces epistemic inequality in the field. When access, trust, and continuity are unevenly distributed, ethnographic depth itself risks becoming stratified. By staying with discomfort rather than resolving it, the paper argues for its generative potential in prompting reflexive, ethical, and more accountable anthropological knowledge.