Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T04:04:08.341Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“We Thought You Would Be White”: Race and Gender in Fieldwork

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2009

Frances B. Henderson
Frances B. Henderson
Affiliation:
Maryville College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

After an exhausting 22-hour trip from St. Louis, I landed in Maputo, Mozambique, alone, for the first time in July 2003 to begin my dissertation research on women and women's organizations in Mozambique since democratization. I spent an hour talking to a young man who was returning home (to Maputo) from Brazil. Seeing it as an opportunity to practice my Portuguese with someone who spoke English, I did not realize that an hour had passed and my “welcoming party” still had not arrived. The young man and I switched from Portuguese to English as he began telling me the “cool places to hang out and get a drink” in Maputo. I had no idea who was coming to pick me up as I was armed only with the information that it was my in-country advisor's brother who would be there. As this young man and I were talking someone came up to me and asked, “Are you Frances?” With a sigh of relief, I said yes, and he replied, “I was here all of the time and I did not realize that you were here until I heard you speaking English with this young man. I did not recognize you; we thought you would be white.”

Type
Symposium
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , April 2009 , pp. 291 - 294
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alcalde, M. Cristina. 2007. “A Feminist Anthropologist's Reflections on Dilemmas of Power and Positionality in the Field.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 7 (2): 143–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cicourel, Aaron Victor. 1964. Method and Measurement in Sociology. New York: Free Press of Glencoe.Google Scholar
Gifford, Lindsay, and Hall-Clifford, Rachel. 2008. “From Catcalls to Kidnapping: Towards and Open Dialogue on the Fieldwork Experience of Graduate Women.” Anthropology News 49 (6): 26–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanchard, Michael G. 2000. “Racism, Eroticism and the Paradoxes of Black U.S. Researcher in Brazil.” In Racing Research and Researching Race: Methodological Dilemmas in Critical Race Studies, ed. Twine, France Winddance and Warren, Jonathon W.. New York: New York University Press, 165–86.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 1987. “Introduction: Is There a Feminist Method?” In Feminism and Methodology, ed. Harding, Sandra. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1–14.Google Scholar
Hill Collins, Patricia. 1990. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge Press.Google Scholar
Kulick, Don, and Wilson, Margaret, eds. 1995. Taboo: Sex, Identity, and Erotic Subjectivity in Anthropological Fieldwork. New York: Routledge Press.Google Scholar
Ladner, Joyce. 1987. “Introduction to Tomorrow's Tomorrow: The Black Woman.” In Feminism and Methodology, ed. Harding, Sandra. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 74–83.Google Scholar
Meena, Ruth, ed. 1992. Gender in Southern Africa: Conceptual and Theoretical Issues. Harare: SAPES Books.Google Scholar
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 1991. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” In Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, ed. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, Russo, Ann, and Torres, Lourdes. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 51–81.Google Scholar
Tsuda, Takeyuki. 2003. Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Return Migration in Transnational Perspective. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Twine, France Winddance, and Warren, Jonathan W.. 2000. Racing Research, Researching race: Methodological Dilemmas in Critical Race Studies. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar