Managing masculinities: dynamics of offshore fishing labour in Vietnam

Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography of the Undersea?

“…These gendered, capitalist, colonial, and speciesist (Knott et al 2022) systems of oppression are especially relevant in analyses of human intervention in the underwater environment considering that commercial diving consists of accessing the undersea to expand and connect capitalist infrastructures (pipes, harbors, wind farms, etc.). Some authors are interested in how natural elements such as water are framed and channeled through technologies, infrastructures, and politics that result from the legacies of settler colonialism (Jue and Ruiz 2021;Liboiron 2021) and how the degradation of the environment resulting from these colonial dynamics relates to gender-based violence and manhood in marine professions (Alonso 2022;Fabinyi 2007;Waitt and Hartig 2005). These studies specifically allow explorations of the articulation of environmental degradation and patriarchy (Knott et al, 2022) in the case of commercial diving, as the profession emphasizes masculinity (as a set of values and corporeal dispositions) and environmental damage (through the degradation of the underwater environment via public work activities).…”

“…Yet, as demonstrated by existing feminist studies that engage with men-dominated physical activities (e.g., Olive and Thorpe 2011), such fields highlight different ethical questions and concerns that feminist researchers are likely to experience compared to women-dominated fields (such as how to handle sexism without compromising the field). Moreover, feminist studies of predominantly masculine professions in the maritime field (e.g., Alonso 2022; Pauwelussen 2022) have emphasized that developing an ethnography of a community of men wherein the creation and reproduction of masculinity frame their activities and relationships with their environment requires not only critical reflexivity of the operations of exclusion and oppression within the field, as expected from any feminist ethnography (Faria and Mollett 2016), but also a rigorous analysis of these operations over the ethnographic knowledge produced. Experiencing gender-based violence and being exposed to increased risks during fieldwork due to the ethnographer’s gender and body require intellectual honesty to emphasize painful situations (if not situations lived as humiliating), considering these situations actively shape the understanding of the field’s social dynamics.…”