Doing Fieldwork while Parenting
Between Challenging and Intensifying Structural Power Imbalances in Anthropological Knowledge Production
Abstract
Conducting fieldwork as a White woman researcher from the Global North on women’s practices of religious knowing in Benin, my work is based on multiple entwined positionalities that require critical reflection. The political categories of race, gender, age, religion, and family status at times linked, at times distanced me from my interlocutors in Benin as well as my colleagues at University of Bayreuth. This article explores the multiple ways parenting has informed my work in Benin and its institutional integration in a German Anthropology department. Using difference as a lens, I enquire how parenting, intersecting with gender, sexuality, and family normativity, has been used to undo difference during fieldwork, while exacerbating structural inequalities with reference to academic funding structures and research organization.
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Frohlick, Susan E. 2002. “You Brought Your Baby to Base Camp? Families and Field Sites.” The Great Lakes Geographer 9, 49–58.
Funk, Leberecht. 2020. “Bringing my Wife and Children to the Field. Methodological, Epistemological and Ethical Reflections.” In Being a Parent in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Accompanied Fieldwork, edited by Fabienne Braukmann, Michaela Haug, Katja Metzmacher, and Rosalie Stolz, 185–208. Bielefeld: Transcript. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839448311
Haug, Michaela. 2020. “Returning to the Field as Mother. Reflections on Closeness and Difference in Long-Term Fieldwork.” In Being a Parent in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Accompanied Fieldwork, edited by Fabienne Braukmann, Michaela Haug, Katja Metzmacher, and Rosalie Stolz, 101–126. Bielefeld: Transcript. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839448311
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Kitchener, Caroline. 2020. “Women Academics Seem to Be Submitting Fewer Papers during Coronavirus.” Washington Post “The Lily”. Accessed November 13, 2020. https://bit.ly/37X0eRJ
Krämer, Mario. 2020. “On Being a Father in the Field. Mobility, Distance and Closeness.” In Being a Parent in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Accompanied Fieldwork, edited by Fabienne Braukmann, Michaela Haug, Katja Metzmacher, and Rosalie Stolz, 209–222. Bielefeld: Transcript. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839448311
Liedloff, Jean. 1989 [1975]. The Continuum Concept. In Search of Happiness Lost. London: Penguin.
Pauli, Julia. 2020. “Rethinking the Ethnographer. Reflections on Fieldwork with and without Family in Mexico and Namibia.” In Being a Parent in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Accompanied Fieldwork, edited by Fabienne Braukmann, Michaela Haug, Katja Metzmacher, and Rosalie Stolz, 39–59. Bielefeld: Transcript. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839448311
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Stolz, Rosalie, Katja Metzmacher, Michaela Haug, and Fabienne Braukmann. 2020.“On Being a Parent in the Field. Practical, Epistemological, Methodological and Ethical Implications of Accompanied Fieldwork.” In Being a Parent in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Accompanied Fieldwork, edited by Fabienne Braukmann, Michaela Haug, Katja Metzmacher, and Rosalie Stolz, 9–36. Bielefeld: Transcript. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839448311
West, Candace, and Sarah Fenstermaker. 1995. “Doing Difference.” Gender and Society 9(1): 8–37.
Alber, Erdmute. 2005. “Drahtseilakt? Plädoyer für ein Leben auf vielen Füssen.” In: Karriere und Kind. Erfahrungsberichte von Wissenschaftlerinnen, edited by Nikola Biller-Andorno, Anna-Karina Jakovljević, Katharina Landfester, and Min Ae Lee-Kirsch, 41–50. Frankfurt / Main: Campus.
Allmendinger, Jutta. 2020. “Zurück in alte Rollen. Corona bedroht die Geschlechtergerechtigkeit.” WZB Mitteilungen 168. Berlin: Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin.
Arndt, Susan. 2020. “Das Ende der Überlegenheitsarie.” taz 21.04.2020. Accessed November 4, 2020. https://taz.de/Privilegien-in-Corona-Krise/!5677150/
Bayerische Staatskanzlei. “Bayerisches Gesetz über die Reisekostenvergütung der Beamten und Richter (Bayerisches Reisekostengesetz – BayRKG) vom 24. April 2001”. Accessed April 15, 2022. https://www.gesetze-bayern.de/Content/Document/BayRKG/true?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
Braukmann, Fabienne, Michaela Haug, Katja Metzmacher, and Rosalie Stolz, eds. 2020. Being a Parent in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Accompanied Fieldwork. Bielefeld: Transcript. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839448311
Canosa, Antonia. 2018. “‘Mummy When Are We Getting to the Fields?’ Doing Fieldwork with Three Children.” In Femininities in the Field. Tourism and Transdisciplinary Research, edited by Brooke A. Porter, and Heike A. Schänzel, 84–95. Bristol: Channel View Publications. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781845416515
Cassell, Joan. 1987. Children in the Field. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Chiseri-Strater, Elisabeth. 1996. “Turning In upon Ourselves: Positionality, Subjectivity, and Reflexivity in Case Study and Ethnographic Research.” In: Ethics and Representation in Qualitative Studies of Literacy, edited by Peter Mortensen, and Gesa E. Kirsch, 115–131. Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1989. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” The University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989(8): 139–167.
Dannenberg, Janina. 2019. “‘Normality’ Revisited: Fieldwork and Family.” In Affective Dimensions of Fieldwork and Ethnography, edited by Thomas Stodulka, Samia Dinkelaker, and Ferdiansyah Thajib, 167–179. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20831-8
Degele, Nina, and Gabriele Winker. 2007. “Intersektionalität als Mehrebenenanalyse.“ Accessed February 15, 2021. https://www.soziologie.uni-freiburg.de/personen/degele/dokumente-publikationen/intersektionalitaet-mehrebenen.pdf
Farrelly, Trisia, Rochelle Stewart-Withers, and Kelly Dombrowski. 2014. “‘Being There’: Mothering and Absence/Presence in the Field.” Sites 11(2): 1–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.11157/sites-vol11iss2id281
Flinn, Juliana. 1998. “Introduction: The Family Dimension in Anthropological Fieldwork.” In Fieldwork and Families: Constructing New Models for Ethnographic Fieldwork, edited by Juliana Flinn, Leslie B. Marshall, Jocelyn Armstrong, 1–21. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1999.101.1.207
Frohlick, Susan E. 2002. “You Brought Your Baby to Base Camp? Families and Field Sites.” The Great Lakes Geographer 9, 49–58.
Funk, Leberecht. 2020. “Bringing my Wife and Children to the Field. Methodological, Epistemological and Ethical Reflections.” In Being a Parent in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Accompanied Fieldwork, edited by Fabienne Braukmann, Michaela Haug, Katja Metzmacher, and Rosalie Stolz, 185–208. Bielefeld: Transcript. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839448311
Haug, Michaela. 2020. “Returning to the Field as Mother. Reflections on Closeness and Difference in Long-Term Fieldwork.” In Being a Parent in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Accompanied Fieldwork, edited by Fabienne Braukmann, Michaela Haug, Katja Metzmacher, and Rosalie Stolz, 101–126. Bielefeld: Transcript. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839448311
Hirschauer, Stefan. 2014. “Un/doing Differences. Zur Kontingenz sozialer Zugehörigkeiten.” Zeitschrift für Soziologie 43(3): 170–191. https://doi.org/10.1515/zfsoz-2014-030.2
Kitchener, Caroline. 2020. “Women Academics Seem to Be Submitting Fewer Papers during Coronavirus.” Washington Post “The Lily”. Accessed November 13, 2020. https://bit.ly/37X0eRJ
Krämer, Mario. 2020. “On Being a Father in the Field. Mobility, Distance and Closeness.” In Being a Parent in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Accompanied Fieldwork, edited by Fabienne Braukmann, Michaela Haug, Katja Metzmacher, and Rosalie Stolz, 209–222. Bielefeld: Transcript. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839448311
Liedloff, Jean. 1989 [1975]. The Continuum Concept. In Search of Happiness Lost. London: Penguin.
Pauli, Julia. 2020. “Rethinking the Ethnographer. Reflections on Fieldwork with and without Family in Mexico and Namibia.” In Being a Parent in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Accompanied Fieldwork, edited by Fabienne Braukmann, Michaela Haug, Katja Metzmacher, and Rosalie Stolz, 39–59. Bielefeld: Transcript. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839448311
Schottmann, Wendy. 1998. “The Joking Relationship as Practiced by the Baatombu of Benin.” In Regards sur le Borgou. Pouvoir et altérité dans une région ouest-africaine, edited by Elisabeth Boesen, Christine Hardung, and Richard Kuba, 155–174. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Stolz, Rosalie, Katja Metzmacher, Michaela Haug, and Fabienne Braukmann. 2020.“On Being a Parent in the Field. Practical, Epistemological, Methodological and Ethical Implications of Accompanied Fieldwork.” In Being a Parent in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Accompanied Fieldwork, edited by Fabienne Braukmann, Michaela Haug, Katja Metzmacher, and Rosalie Stolz, 9–36. Bielefeld: Transcript. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839448311
West, Candace, and Sarah Fenstermaker. 1995. “Doing Difference.” Gender and Society 9(1): 8–37.
Published
2023-02-22
How to Cite
Ayeh, Anna Madeleine. 2023. “Doing Fieldwork While Parenting: Between Challenging and Intensifying Structural Power Imbalances in Anthropological Knowledge Production”. Swiss Journal of Sociocultural Anthropology 28 (February):24-40. https://doi.org/10.36950/sjsca.2022.28.7998.
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