Feminist Reflections on Fieldwork

Abstract

In this article we contemplate feminist research and the practical concerns it raises. We discuss the principles of feminist fieldwork, including the ethics of care, cooperation between researcher and informant, acknowledgment of the situated nature of knowledge production, and the role of new knowledge in the empowerment of informants. We also consider the questions these principles raise: Are there any particular feminist methods? Can giving voice to the oppressed help explain structural inequalities? Is it possible to apply egalitarian principles in research? What problems in the field might be caused by an ethics of care? Although these dilemmas of the feminist approach to research are widely discussed in the international literature, they are almost completely absent from Russian academic discourse. In this article we also reflect upon the role of the gender and sexuality of the researcher in fieldwork. In our conclusion, we offer some considerations regarding ways of making research more sensitive to questions of gender. In Russian.