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Unwilling Participant Observation among Russian Siloviki and the Good-Enough Field Researcher

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2009

Janet Elise Johnson
Affiliation:
Brooklyn College, City University of New York

Extract

In 1999, on a trip to Russia to study gender violence, I was sitting in on a special training at a Moscow police academy. In between jokes about the impossibility of prostitutes getting raped, the cops-in-training could not stop focusing on me, the one American and one of three women in a rowdy room. For example, one man loudly asked me whether all Americans had cars and followed up with a comment that, of course we did, because this is where “you” (meaning me) would have sex. The training on rape and sexual harassment that I had come to observe had come to a halt because the new police were so intent on making sexual jokes. These comments felt even more threatening than they might otherwise because, a few days before, I had been picked up by the Russian police, shoved into a police car with several drunken officers, and driven around Moscow until I offered a bribe.

Type
Symposium
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 2009

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References

James, Susan. 1992. “The Good-enough Citizen: Citizenship and Independence.” In Beyond Equality and Difference: Citizenship, Feminist Politics and Female Subjectivity, ed. Bock, Gisela and James, Susan. New York: Routledge, 4865.Google Scholar
Johnson, Janet Elise. 2009. Gender Violence in Russia: The Politics of Feminist Intervention. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Sandoval, Chela. 2000. Methodology of the Oppressed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar