A man researching amongst women: a problematic configuration in the field?
Based on field research conducted with some forty women in a Swiss Alpine Valley, in this paper I return to the epistemo-methodological question of whether a cisgender man can understand and account for the discourses of the women with whom he conducts research. In other words, can he “speak for them” despite the still largely unequal social statuses of men and women in our Western societies, and some strong reservations formulated by certain feminist authors. Martin and Roux (2015 : 6) pose the question of legitimacy in the following terms : “Does the posture one adopts in the research process (...) necessarily reproduce the position one occupies structurally in society ?” Could it be, to the contrary, that the unusual framework of interactions my research contributed — at an admittedly modest scale — to “undoing gender” in the field ?
Keywords
- epistemology
- gender
- research field
- legitimacy
- gendered division of labor
- development project
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Publikation Information
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Verlag:
ethnographiques.org, Numéro 44 - Décembre 2022 « Le genre en train de se faire: trouble dans le terrain»
Sprachen:
Französisch
Stadt:
Charenton-le-Pont
Jahr:
2022
Themen:
Disziplinen:
Forschungsthemen:
Epistemologie – Theorie – Methodologie
Arbeit – Laufbahn – Beruf
Entwicklungszusammenarbeit – Development
Fächer:
Gender Studies, Sozialanthropologie
Form:
Artikel