The researcher’s erotic subjectivities: epistemological and ethical challenges
Abstract
This paper aims to deepen the conversation about the potential relevance and importance of including reflection on the desire and sexuality of the researcher in research outputs. We critically scrutinise the exceptionalisation of sexual(ised) interactions in research: why is sexual(ised) contact between researchers and participants considered unethical or problematic, and what are the consequences of the avoidance of—and/or the (self-)censorship with regard to discussing—intimacy in the field? This discussion leads us to argue for an alternative ethical approach than that prescribed by institutional ethical protocols. The ethical approach that we envision is based on the premise that knowledge production never occurs apart from our bodies and that a research relationship is not fundamentally different from any other human relationship. What we propose is a relational research ethics that creates space for discussing openly and in dialogue with others the (potential) consequences of our actions as researchers/human beings within relationships of shifting power asymmetry.Keywords
geographies of sexualities, reflexivity, research ethics, researcher, sexual subjectivityReferences
ABRAMSON, Allen (1993). “Between autobiography and method: Being male, seeing myth and the analysis of structures of gender and sexuality in the eastern interior of Fiji”. In: BELL, Diane; CAPLAN, Pat and KARIM, Wazir J. (eds.). Gendered Fields: Women, Men and Ethnography. London: Routledge, 63-77.
BELL, David J. (1995). “[Screw]ing geography (censor’s version)”. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 13, 127-131. https://doi.org/10.1068/d130127
BELL, Susan E. (2002). “Sexualizing research: Response to Erich Goode”. Qualitative Sociology, 25 (4), 535-539. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021067000221
BLIDON, Marianne (2012). Géographie de la sexualité ou sexualité du géographe? Quelques leçons autour d’une injonction. Paper presented at the Annales de géographie.
BOURDIEU, Pierre (2004). Science of Science and Reflexivity. Cambridge: Polity.
BRAIDOTTI, Rosi (2006). Affirmation versus vulnerability: On contemporary ethical debates. Paper presented at the Symposium.
BRAIDOTTI, Rosi (2008). “Affirmation, Pain and Empowerment”. Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, 14 (3), 7-36. https://doi.org/10.1080/12259276.2008.11666049
CLIMO, Jacob (1999). “A memory of intimacy in liminal space”. In: MARKOWITZ, Fran and ASHKENAZI, Michael (eds.). Sex, Sexuality, and the Anthropologist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 43-56.
CUPPLES, Julie (2002). “The field as a landscape of desire: sex and sexuality in geographical fieldwork”. Area, 34 (4), 382-390. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-4762.00095
DE CRAENE, Valerie (2017). “Fucking geographers! Or the epistemological consequences of neglecting the lusty researcher’s body”. Gender, Place & Culture, 24 (3), 449-464. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2017.1314944
DE GRAEVE, Katrien (accepted). “Beyond the crazy ex-girlfriend: Drawing the contours of a radical vulnerability”. Sexualities.
ELLIS, Carolyn (2007). “Telling Secrets, Revealing Lives: Relational Ethics in Research with Intimate Others”. Qualitative Inquiry, 13 (1), 3-29. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800406294947
GILSON, Erinn (2013). The Ethics of Vulnerability: A Feminist Analysis of Social Life and Practice. New York: Taylor & Francis.
GOODE, Erich (1999). “Sex with informants as deviant behavior: An account and commentary”. Deviant Behavior, 20 (4), 301-324. https://doi.org/10.1080/016396299266416
HARAWAY, Donna (1988). “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”. Feminist Studies, 14 (3), 575-599.
HARDING, Sandra (1991). Whose science? Whose knowledge? Thinking from women’s lives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
HARDING, Sandra (1992). “Rethinking standpoint epistemology: What is ‘strong objectivity’?”. The Centennial Review, 36 (3), 437-470.
HARITAWORN, Jin; LIN, Chin-ju and KLESSE, Christian (2006). “Poly/logue: A Critical Introduction to Polyamory”. Sexualities, 9 (5), 515-529. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460706069963
HASTRUP, Kirsten (1995). A Passage to Anthropology: Between Experience and Theory. New York: Routledge.
HERVIK, Peter (1994). “Shared reasoning in the field: Reflexivity beyond the author”. In: HASTRUP, Kirsten and HERVIK, Peter (eds.). Social Experience and Anthropological Knowledge. London: Routledge, 78-100.
hooks, bell (2004). The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. New York: Atria Books.
KILLICK, Andrew P. (1995/2003). “The penetrating intellect: on being white, straight, and male in Korea”. In: KULICK, Don and WILLSON, Margaret (eds.). Taboo: Sex, Identity and Erotic Subjectivity in Anthropological Fieldwork. London: Routledge, 76-106.
KLESSE, Christian (2014). “Poly Economics—Capitalism, Class, and Polyamory”. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 27 (2), 203-220. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-013-9157-4
KRIEGER, Susan (1991). Social Science and the Self: Personal Essays on an Art Form. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
KULICK, Don and WILLSON, Margaret (1995/2003). Taboo: Sex, Identity and Erotic Subjectivity in Anthropological Fieldwork. London: Taylor & Francis.
LERUM, Kari (2001). “Subjects of Desire: Academic Armor, Intimate Ethnography, and the Production of Critical Knowledge”. Qualitative Inquiry, 7 (4), 466-483. https://doi.org/10.1177/107780040100700405
LONGHURST, Robyn (1995). “The Body and Geography”. Gender, Place & Culture, 2 (1), 97-106. https://doi.org/10.1080/09663699550022134
LONGHURST, Robyn (2004). Bodies: Exploring Fluid Boundaries. Abingdon: Routledge.
LONGHURST, Robyn and JOHNSTON, Lynda (2014). “Bodies, gender, place and culture: 21 years on”. Gender, Place & Culture, 21 (3), 267-78. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2014.897220
MOHANTY, Chandra T. (1991). “Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses”. In: MOHANTY, Chandra T.; RUSSO, Ann and TORRES, Lourdes (eds.). Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 52-80.
NASH, Catherine J. and BAIN, Alison (2007). “‘Reclaiming raunch’? Spatializing queer identities at Toronto women’s bathhouse events”. Social & Cultural Geography, 8 (1), 47-62. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649360701251809
NEWTON, Esther. (1993). “My best informant’s dress: The erotic equation in fieldwork”. Cultural Anthropology, 8 (1), 3-23.
OKELY, Judith (2001). “Anthropology and autobiography: Participatory experience and embodied knowledge”. In: CALLAWAY, Helen and OKELY, Judith (eds.). Anthropology and Autobiography. London: Routledge, 1-28.
RABINOW, Paul (1977). Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco. Berkeley: University of California Press.
ROBINSON, Victoria (1997). “My baby just cares for me: Feminism, heterosexuality and non‐Monogamy”. Journal of Gender Studies, 6 (2), 143-157. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.1997.9960678
ROSE, Gillian (1997). “Situating knowledges: positionality, reflexivities and other tactics”. Progress in Human Geography, 21 (3), 305-320. https://doi.org/10.1191/030913297673302122
SAGUY, Abigail C. (2002). “Sex, inequality, and ethnography: Response to Erich Goode”. Qualitative Sociology, 25 (4), 549-556. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021071101130
SALAMONE, Frank A. (1999). “‘Oh, there you are!’: sex and the heterosexual anthropologist”. In: MARKOWITZ, Fran and ASHKENAZI, Michael (eds.). Sex, Sexuality, and the Anthropologist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 57-74.
SPARKES, Andrew C. (2002). “Auto-ethnography: self-indulgence or something more?” In: BOCHNER, Arthur P. and ELLIS, Carolyn (eds.). Ethnographically Speaking: Autoethnography, Literature, and Aesthetics. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 209-232.
VANDERBECK, Robert M. (2005). “Masculinities and Fieldwork: Widening the discussion”. Gender, Place & Culture, 12 (4), 387-402. https://doi.org/10.1080/09663690500356537
WADE, Peter (1993). “Sexuality and masculinity in fieldwork among Colombian blacks”. In: BELL, Diane; CAPLAN, Pat and WAZIR, J. Karim (eds.). Gendered Fields: Women, Men and Ethnography. London: Routledge, 199-214.
WEKKER, Gloria (2006). The Politics of Passion: Women’s Sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora. New York: Columbia University Press.
WHITEHEAD, Tony L. (1986). “Breakdown, resolution and coherence: the fieldwork experiences of a big, brown, pretty-talking man in a West Indian community”. In: WHITEHEAD, Tony L. and CONAWAY, Mary E. (eds.). Self, Sex, and Gender in Cross-Cultural Fieldwork. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 213-239.
WILLEY, Angela (2016). Undoing Monogamy: The Politics of Science and the Possibilities of Biology. Durham: Duke University Press.
WILLIAMS, Christine L. (2002). “To know me is to love me? Response to Erich Goode”. Qualitative Sociology, 25 (4), 557-560. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021023217968
WINKELMAN, Michael (1999). “Cross-cultural social-sexual adaptations in fieldwork: Perspectives from Mexican field settings”. In: MARKOWITZ, Fran and ASHKENAZI, Michael (eds.). Sex, Sexuality, and the Anthropologist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 75-79.
Published
How to Cite
Downloads
Copyright (c) 2019 Katrien De Graeve; Valerie De Craene
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
