Undressing the researcher: feminism, embodiment and sexuality at a queer bathhouse event

Bain, Alison L.; Nash, Catherine J.

doi:10.1111/j.1475-4762.2006.00663.x

Cited by 82 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Ever since Humphreys' (1970) controversial Tea Room Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places, the question of balancing participation and observation has been important to many researchers (Bain and Nash 2006;Harding 1987;Neitz 2002;Peshkin 1984;Varisco 2007:14;Wilcox 2002). Humphreys participated in gay sex in public restrooms in the sub-culturally appropriate role as "watch queen," who was assigned the duties of turning away the public and watching out for the police while being a voyeur.…”

Section: What Am I?: Being Betwixt and Betweenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lost in a sea of subjectivity: the subject position of the researcher in the anthropology of Islam

Lukens-Bull

2007

Cont Islam

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This paper examines some of the illustrative features of doing participant observation research with Muslims both in the field and back "home." It is based on my experiences of conducting research in East Java, Indonesia in the classicalist Islamic boarding schools. My religious subjectivity was important to my research in a number of ways including: (1) the ways in which the community tried to define my subjectivity; (2) the nature of my personal religious subjectivity; and (3) academic interpretations of my role and my subject position vis-à-vis Islam and the profession of anthropology.

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Section: What Am I?: Being Betwixt and Betweenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lost in a sea of subjectivity: the subject position of the researcher in the anthropology of Islam

Lukens-Bull

2007

Cont Islam

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“…The perceived representation of their bodies was a constant tension. On reflection of the bathhouse guidelines, Bain and Nash (2006) stated that these suggestions reinforced for us our desire to 'blend in' with other participants. Yet we also recognized that we could be positioned as sexual subjects in the eyes of others, and we wanted to communicate that neither one of us was available to participate in any sexual activities.…”

Section: Challenging Colonial Discourse Versus Reinforcing Colonial Dmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Muting power might, for example, begin in the body. Bain and Nash (2006) argue that 'the researching body' is a visible and contested site of knowledge production. They discuss the purposeful and contentious process of preparing, positioning and interacting with bodies throughout their ethnographic research into feminism, embodiment and sexuality at a queer bathhouse.…”

Section: Challenging Colonial Discourse Versus Reinforcing Colonial Dmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Schools are famously conservative sites and researchers (as well as teachers) are vulnerable to how they are perceived. McDowell (1995) argues that bodily presentation and deportment affects both how others perceive us, and how they interact with us (see also, Bain and Nash 2006). During fieldwork, we each made a conscious decision to dress in our own 'normal' way; we both display our tattoos and wear casual clothing (jeans, t-shirts, denim or leather jackets).…”

Section: Challenging Colonial Discourse Versus Reinforcing Colonial Dmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tensions in ethnographic research

Fitzpatrick

Allen²

2017

ethnographic-edge

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In this paper, we reflect on the tensions inhering in a multi-layered ethnographic project, with two researchers, across four school sites. This project is somewhat ambitious as we are combining critical ethnography with participatory and decolonising methods (and theories) across four sites. In so doing, we aim to explore the health-related experiences of diverse young people, at the intersection of gender sexuality, place and class, as well and ethnicity and culture. We focus here on four specific methodological tensions. We employ Michelle Fine’s notion of ‘working the hyphen’ to explore tensions of decolonising-recolonising; collaborating-co-constructing; interactive-participatory approaches; being critical-being a listener in research.

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“…Understanding 'non-cognitive thought as a set of embodied dispositions' (Thrift, 2001, p.36), geographers have sought further ways of knowing through embodiment. Thus, while geographers continue to draw attention to the embodied experience of doing fieldwork and the importance of race, class, gender and sexuality in how bodies are read by others and meanings co-constructed (Bain and Nash 2006;Malam, 2004;Vanderbeck, 2005), they are also engaged in research which foregrounds embodied experience, whether working alongside participants to understand manual labour in India (Waite, in press; see also Whitelegg, 2005;Hanna et al, 2004), sharing the embodied mobilities of cyclists and drivers (P. Jones 2005;Laurier, 2004;Sheller, 2004), or reflecting on the embodied nature of academic work itself (Davies et al, 2005).…”

Section: Embodiment and Emotionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Qualitative methods: are you enchanted or are you alienated?

Davies

Dwyer²

2007

Progress in Human Geography

124

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Since the last report on qualitative methods (Crang, 2005), much has been going on as normal within the practical procedures of doing qualitative research. Human geographers continue to study texts, to conduct interviews, to convene groups and to engage in ethnography. Indeed, it is hard, though perhaps not impossible, to imagine what a radically new form of qualitative research practice might look like. So, for the time being, this suite of methods remains the backbone of qualitative research in human geography. Yet, we would like to contend that whilst these activities continue as before, there are changes in the way they are being conceived and carried out, and related to this, there are transformations in the way these methods are being used to make claims to understanding and intervening in the world. In the first of our three reports on qualitative methods, it is this link between qualitative methodologies and interpretative strategies we would like to reflect on. If looking for a provocative metaphor and some opening arguments, then a good starting point is John Law's methods (anti)textbook After Method: Mess in social science research (Law 2004). From this it is possible to derive elements that describe some, if not encapsulate all, of these impulses. Firstly, and above all, there is rejection of singularity; of the operation of social science research methods simply to generate clarity, precision and reduce uncertainty and ambiguity in our understanding of the world. This is not to argue that existing 3 methodological repertoires are irrelevant, nor that empirical research is futile (though it does raise thorny issues for simplistic approaches to the orthodoxy of triangulation). Rather, there is the suggestion that we need to revise our understanding of what social science investigations achieve as particular ways of framing and interfering with the world. There is commitment to understanding all research as performative; that our methods help enact the real in different situations (Law and Urry, 2004; Makussen, 2005). Thus we have to figure out what it means to engage with the world, both in methodological practice, but also in our choice of interpretative strategy and ethical aspirations (Bennett, 2001). In place of the pursuit of certainty in generating representations of the world, there is recognition that the world is so textured as to exceed our capacity to understand it, and thus to accede that social science methodologies and forms of knowing will be characterised as much by openness, reflexivity and recursivity as by categorisation, conclusion and closure.We explore these issues below through three themes recurring in recent qualitative research in human geography: questions of agency, embodiment and emotion; being within nature; and the performativity of place. Concluding, we reflect briefly on the politics of these forms of qualitative research, raising questions we intend to explore more explicitly in our review next year, perhaps anticipating that practical experimentation and critical dia...

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Undressing the researcher: feminism, embodiment and sexuality at a queer bathhouse event

Cited by 82 publications

References 24 publications

Lost in a sea of subjectivity: the subject position of the researcher in the anthropology of Islam

Lost in a sea of subjectivity: the subject position of the researcher in the anthropology of Islam

Tensions in ethnographic research

Qualitative methods: are you enchanted or are you alienated?

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