Mothering from the Field by Bahiyyah M. Muhammad Melanie-Angela Neuilly

Author:Bahiyyah M. Muhammad, Melanie-Angela Neuilly [Bahiyyah M. Muhammad, Melanie-Angela Neuilly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781978800571
Goodreads: 41743766
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 2019-06-14T00:00:00+00:00

Subverting the Patriarchal Ethnographic Framework

Considering the ethnographic observation continuum reminds us that those of us who go deep and turn their research into their lives embody a specific type of work ethic: one that is only possible when there are no other responsibilities in one’s life (in my case, when I was younger) or in a patriarchal system when one (usually a man) can rely on a support system (wife, assistants, etc.) to take care of all other responsibilities. Field research in the social sciences has been shaped by this approach, going back to the origins of ethnographic work in modern anthropology, with Franz Boas and his study of Alaskan Natives (1888) or Bronislaw Malinowski in the Trobriand Islands (1922, 1929, 1935), or in contemporary sociology, particularly with the Chicago School, but also, of course, with Erving Goffman and his participant observation of psychiatric wards (1961), or Howard Becker’s study of drug users (1973), to name a few. We see such approaches continue to dominate today’s ethnographic scene, with high profile works—in chronological order—by Philippe Bourgois (In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio, 1995), Sudhir Venkatesh (Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets, 2008), Alice Goffman (On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, 2014), and Matthew Desmond (Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, 2016) despite some of them being questioned on grounds of ethical or methodological soundness.

So while qualitative research has typically been seen as a way for researchers to turn their backs on a reifying and oppressive positivist methodological paradigm (Law, 2004; Pascale, 2001; Sprague, 2016), a lot of the examples of ethnographic research we glorify rest on the very system at the basis of the rejected paradigm. As such, I want to propose that despite (or maybe because of) all the guilt I experienced as a result of not being able to shut the rest of the world off and dive deep into my research site, my careful observations conducted from nine to five, with a lunch break in the middle, and then put to rest until the next morning after being meticulously journaled on the bus ride home every day are no less valuable than those observations I conducted when I was twenty-seven, staying up for twenty-some hours in order to stay for back-to-back shifts and then going to the bar for my daily “debriefing.”

How is it then that I and many other field researchers (and also academics who do not conduct field research, nonacademic professional women, and just basically everybody else) see motherhood as a limitation or a constraint? We hide it, deemphasize it, do everything in our power to minimize its “impact” on our work, and yet there is power in our motherhood. Indeed, what this has taught me is that far from a constraint or a limitation in research, motherhood is a standpoint. Understanding and accepting that has allowed me not only to better journal my experience in Nice but also to look

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.