Description

Feminist geographers have long employed methodologies that center critical reflexivity, situated knowledges, and a radical attention to embodiment in research (England 1994, Haraway 1991, Nagar and Geiger 2007, Rose 1997, Sultana 2007). A feminist methodology committed to postcolonial intersectionality (Kobayashi 1994) also requires that we recognize the ways in which we as researchers are situated along multiple complex axes of power--including but not limited to race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, nationality, age, class, dis/ability, religion--in ways that fundamentally shape our lives and our work. Our methodological praxis also provokes us to blur the boundary between home/field, self/field, and self/interlocutor, and requires that we recognize that we are always in ‘the field’ (Hyndman 2001, Katz 1994).

In this call for papers at the 2021 virtual AAG, we look for new work that builds on previous insights in feminist methodologies by exploring the sexual politics of fieldwork as it intersects with other axes of identity. We are inspired by people making interventions and starting conversations on this theme (Cupples 2002, Faria and Mollett 2016, Hoang 2015, Langarita Adiego 2019, Nelson et al. 2017, Schneider et al. 2020). We invite participation from a wide breadth of researchers, at different stages in their careers, who do fieldwork in a variety of places and situations, and who come from different racialized identities and ethnicities, genders and sexualities. In this session(s) we aim to consider the following:

● Sexualized spaces
● Consent
● Politics of race and racism
● Fieldwork as a masculinist rite of passage
● Sexuality and desire
● Patriarchal power relations
● Reflexivity and positionality
● Critical whiteness
● Sexual harassment and assault
● Auto-ethnography and insider ethnography
● And more ...

Send paper abstracts and/or a note saying that you are interested in participating to Araby Smyth arabysmyth@uky.edu.

References:
Cupples, J. (2002). The Field as a Landscape of Desire: Sex and Sexuality in Geographical Fieldwork. Area, 34(4), 382–390.
England, K. V. L. (1994). Getting Personal: Reflexivity, Positionality, and Feminist Research. The Professional Geographer, 46(1), 80–89.
Faria, C. & Mollett, S. 2016. “Critical Feminist Reflexivity and the Politics of Whiteness in the ‘Field.’” Gender, Place & Culture 23 (1): 79–93.
Haraway, D. J. (1991). Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. Routledge.
Hoang, K. K. 2015. Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work. University of California Press.
Katz, C. (1994). Playing the Field: Questions of Fieldwork in Geography. The Professional Geographer, 46(1), 67–72.
Kobayashi, A. (1994). Coloring the field: Gender, “race”, and the politics of fieldwork. Professional Geographer, 46(1), 73–80.
Langarita Adiego, J. A. (2019). On sex in fieldwork: Notes on the methodology involved in the ethnographic study of anonymous sex. Sexualities, 22(7–8), 1253–1267.
Nagar, R., & Geiger, S. (2007). Reflexivity and positionality in feminist fieldwork revisited. In A. Tickell, E. Sheppard, J. Peck, & T. J. Barnes (Eds.), Politics and Practice in Economic Geography. SAGE Publications.
Nelson, R. G., Rutherford, J. N., Hinde, K. & Clancy, K. B. H. 2017. “Signaling Safety: Characterizing Fieldwork Experiences and Their Implications for Career Trajectories.” American Anthropologist 119 (4): 710–722.
Rose, G. (1997). Situating knowledges: Positionality, reflexivities and other tactics. Progress in Human Geography, 21(3), 305–320.
Schneider, M., Lord, E., & Wilczak, J. (2020). We, too: Contending with the sexual politics of fieldwork in China. Gender, Place & Culture, 0(0), 1–22.
Sultana, F. (2007). Reflexivity, Positionality and Participatory Ethics: Negotiating Fieldwork Dilemmas in International Research. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 6(3), 374–385.