Sexuality and power on South African game farms; reflections on positionality and emotions in ethnographic research

Brandt, Femke; Josefsson, Jenny

doi:10.1016/j.emospa.2017.02.004

Cited by 6 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Gatekeepers "keep the gate" by deciding or influencing what information or resources reach the researcher (Kalina and Scott 2019;Lewin 1947). The phenomenon of gatekeepers as barriers in research has been broadly covered within foundational methodological literature (Clark 2011;Emmel et al 2007;Limb and Dwyer 2001;McFadyen and Rankin 2017;Singh and Wassenaar 2016), including within more recent reflections on situated, empirical research conducted in African contexts (Andoh-Arthur et al 2018;Brandt and Josefsson 2017;Kalina and Scott 2019;Koen, Wassenaar, and Mamotte 2017;Pascucci 2017). Moreover, in addition to lamentations over the ways in which local gatekeepers can serve as barriers to access, much thought and reflection have gone into the ways in which gatekeepers can serve as "gateways" to the field, as facilitators, fixers, or translators, who assist in providing access and can help interpret cultural/ political issues while contributing to the acceptance of the researcher by their subjects (Campbell et al 2006;Kalina and Scott 2019;Koch 2013;Turner 2013).…”

Section: Gatekeepers and Gatewaysmentioning

confidence: 99%

“My Flight Arrives at 5 am, Can You Pick Me Up?”: The Gatekeeping Burden of the African Academic

Tilley

Kalina

2021

Journal of African Cultural Studies

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Over the past decade, there has been increased awareness and discourse around the inequalities which structure North-South academic collaboration. The purpose of this discussion is to look at the other side of this dynamic: the gatekeeping burden of African scholars in facilitating Northern fieldwork within the African continent. We argue that this burden further exacerbates inherent inequalities within North-South relationships. By way of conclusion, we offer a number of practical steps that Northern researchers can take when engaging African academics which will contribute to more ethical collaboration, and a more positive and lasting impact within African institutions. KEYWORDSgatekeeping; Africa; fieldwork; research Imagine this: a young woman, a Tanzanian researcher, arriving in the UK for a 2 month long fieldwork, to write the definitive study on the sexual practices of academics in North Oxford. Demanding access, expecting intimacy, being invited into homes. Welcomed.The satire is obviously thinly veiled, as few academics from the Global South, and Africa in particular, enjoy opportunities for fieldwork within Northern communities, or get opportunities to establish expertise on Northern subjects or within Northern contexts. Meanwhile numerous Northern academics prominently make careers out of their "African" expertise, often to the exclusion of their African colleagues, while the continent seasonally abounds with Northern researchers on their summer sabbaticals: scholars, graduate students, study abroad programmes, all treating the lived realities of 1.2 billion individuals as part of their personal and career development. The unidirectional nature of this exchange speaks to the lingering colonialism and racism inherent within global academia, a topic that has drawn considerably scholarly attention within recent years (see for example

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Section: Gatekeepers and Gatewaysmentioning

confidence: 99%

“My Flight Arrives at 5 am, Can You Pick Me Up?”: The Gatekeeping Burden of the African Academic

Tilley

Kalina

2021

Journal of African Cultural Studies

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“…Jenny Josefsson (Brandt and Josefsson, 2017) used the name of a man who was in a position of authority to negotiate the feelings of men trying to get her drunk and induce her to spend the night with them. She realized that this was an effective strategy, and less offensive than saying “no, I do not want to.” Since men in her research context respected the “property” of other men, they made no further advances.…”

Section: “Diving Away” From Msizimentioning

confidence: 99%

“Ducking, diving and playing along”

Mphaphuli

Griffin

2019

QRJ

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the fieldwork dilemmas a young, female, heterosexual, indigenous South African researching everyday negotiations around heterosexuality within township families encountered in negotiating her own heteroerotic subjectivity within the field. Design/methodology/approach A heterosexuality studies approach is here combined with a critical feminist research methodological perspective. Findings The paper argues that researchers are often unprepared for having to negotiate their erotic subjectivity within the field and that such negotiations can be compromising to the researcher in a variety of ways. Practical implications The paper suggests that more might be done to prepare researchers for negotiating identity aspects such as sexuality in the field since that negotiation impacts on one’s research and the researcher’s sense of self in the field. Social implications The paper critically interrogates what negotiating one’s erotic subjectivity in the field might mean. Originality/value Little is published on female researchers negotiating their heteroerotic subjectivity in the field. The paper contributes original insights on this from fieldwork carried out by an indigenous heterosexual female researcher in South African townships. It raises important issues about the conduct of fieldwork in (non-)compromising and agentic ways.

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“…In general, it was harder for black South African students to access or establish rapport with white farmers because they were less welcomed than were white European students and researchers. The female researchers' experiences also revealed the gendered nature of the game farming landscape (Brandt and Josefsson 2017).…”

Section: Analyzing the Multistakeholder Engagements In The Research Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Game farmers' selfproclaimed identity as custodians of nature is instrumental in the context of post-apartheid rhetoric of land reform and transformation in which white landowners feel the need to legitimise their position on the land (Josefsson 2014, Brandt andJosefsson 2017). The conversions, however, also lead to tensions within the white farmers' community about, for instance, livestock diseases and predator control (Brandt and Spierenburg 2014).…”

Section: Making Farm Dwellers Visible As Stakeholders In Game Farmingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Firstly, it would be a serious violation of the general ethical codes of academia and research. Secondly, we were dependent on farmers and landowners for access to both places and people and we could not risk compromising their willingness to participate (this still turned out to be a problematic negotiation; see Brandt and Josefsson 2017).…”

Section: Analyzing the Multistakeholder Engagements In The Research Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Power and politics in stakeholder engagement: farm dweller (in)visibility and conversions to game farming in South Africa

Brandt¹,

Josefsson²,

Spierenburg³

2018

E&S

Self Cite

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ABSTRACT. Here, we discuss tensions inherent in multistakeholder approaches addressing conflicts over natural resources as well as the involvement of stakeholders in research. Our discussion is built on knowledge generated by extensive research on the impacts of private farm conversions to game farms in South Africa, where significant increases in farm conversions have been observed since the 1990s. The studies had a particular focus on the consequences for farm dwellers, one of the most marginalized groups in the South African countryside. The research findings challenge the dominant narrative that game farming offers a win-win situation for nature conservation and rural development. Based on data from the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces, we extended the narrow technical and economic framing of the narrative to include the socio-political meanings of the conversions. We reflect on a series of multistakeholder workshops that we organized, partly as a requirement of the funding agency. The workshop aims were to disseminate our research findings among the stakeholder groups and explore ways to mitigate the negative impacts of conversions. We discuss how we organized the engagement process in ways that sought to address the power differences between game farmers, the State, and farm dwellers. The main challenge appeared to be that farm dwellers were not recognized as stakeholders. This "invisibility" has multiple reasons, in particular, the historical and current trajectories of land dispossession. It is also linked to specific institutional and personal relations in the two provinces, resulting in different uses of the workshop spaces. By considering the complexities of stakeholder relations in the farm conversion context, we gained a deeper understanding of the politics of land and belonging in the still unequal postapartheid rural landscape. Based on experiences from the research as well as the workshops, we take a critical stance regarding mainstream notions of stakeholder engagement and resilience building. We argue that if we fail to consider power relations and politics explicitly in these processes, we risk neglecting important conflicts and reproducing the invisibility of marginalized stakeholders.

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Sexuality and power on South African game farms; reflections on positionality and emotions in ethnographic research

Cited by 6 publications

References 32 publications

“My Flight Arrives at 5 am, Can You Pick Me Up?”: The Gatekeeping Burden of the African Academic

“My Flight Arrives at 5 am, Can You Pick Me Up?”: The Gatekeeping Burden of the African Academic

“Ducking, diving and playing along”

Power and politics in stakeholder engagement: farm dweller (in)visibility and conversions to game farming in South Africa

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