Embodying the Field: A researcher’s reflections on power dynamics, positionality and the nature of...

[FIR 8.1 (2013) 27–49] Fieldwork in Religion (print) ISSN 1743–0615doi: 10.1558/fiel.v8i1.27 Fieldwork in Religion (online) ISSN 1743–0623

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013, Unit S3, Kelham House, 3 Lancaster Street, Sheffield S3 8AF.

Nina Hoel

Embodying thE FiEld: A REsEARchER’s REFlEctions on PowER dynAmics, PositionAlity And thE nAtuRE oF REsEARch RElAtionshiPs

Nina Hoel is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Religious Studies at the Uni-versity of Cape Town.

University of Cape Town1 Hillway, Hillside roadTamboerskloof, 8001Cape TownSouth Africa

[email protected]

AbstRAct

This article focuses on the various ways in which research relationships evolve and are negoti-ated by paying particular attention to the embodied nature of ethnographic research. By draw-ing on my own research experience of interviewing South African Muslim women about sexual dynamics, I critically engage debates concerning power dynamics in research relationships as well as researcher positionality. I argue that researchers should pay increasing attention to the multiple ways in which doing research always is an embodied practice. I present three case stud-ies that highlight the complex ways in which research encounters speak to notions of intimacy, vulnerability and affect. In this way I argue that research encounters forge primary human rela-tionalities that are marked by moments of convergence, conflict and despondency.

Keywords: embodiment; ethnography; Muslim women; positionality; power dynamics; South Africa.

mailto:[email protected]

28 Fieldwork in religion

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013

What am I doing? Am I fully prepared for this research I am about to undertake? What if I get lost on the way? What if I get robbed, or worse, raped and stabbed? I got my cell phone hidden in my underwear and extra cash stashed away in my socks, the audio-recorder is safely placed in my inner jacket pocket together with my pen and notepad. What if the woman I am about to meet does not show up? What if she changed her mind about the whole thing? Seriously, calm down now, I can do this! I got the in-depth interview methods course fresh in mind and I am sure that entering into the heart of gangster’s paradise is not as bad as my colleagues will have it made out to be.

I arrive at the mini-bus taxi rank with these questions permeating my interior. I find the mini-bus taxi with my destination inscribed at the rear, above the bum-per. It must be my lucky day, this mini-bus taxi holds the name “jou lekke ding” (“you nice thing”), engraved in bold graffiti along the side. Excruciating techno music is blasting from speakers attached to the roof and floorboards. The driver looks at me and smiles with countless gold teeth, saying: “Wanna catch a ride whitie?” I climb into the mini-bus taxi, now out of sight, hidden behind the tinted windows. My eardrums are already starting to tremble, and I feel my heart pounding in tandem with the techno beat. The gaartjie (person collect-ing the mini-bus taxi fare) is shouting out one of the windows, trying to lure yet another person into “jou lekke ding,” which is already cramped with passengers now eying each other with uncertainty. The gaartjie pulls out a laptop (a plank of wood that fits between two seats separated by the walkway) from under-neath my seat and orchestrates the new spatial arrangements, while concomi-tantly collecting money from annoyed passengers. Here we go!

1 IntroductionEntering into the field for the first time is a profound experience. The precarious-ness of my own researcher positioning, coupled with self-doubt and ambiguous exhilaration, surfaces as the preamble to the awaiting research encounter runs its course. Doing fieldwork is a unique opportunity to engage realities that are seem-ingly unfamiliar and it affords the possibility of forging new relationships within which spaces for conversation and interactional exchange are carved out. That being said, it is critical to bear in mind the complex systems of power that infuse research relationships.

I am a non-Muslim Norwegian woman, whose research journey into the lives and realities of Muslim women living in Cape Town, South Africa, is marked by intersectional racial, religious and socio-economic differences. My development as a scholar of religious studies is influenced by a secular humanist background with strong feminist proclivities. Having spent close to ten years studying and working in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town, I am exceedingly cognizant of the vast racial, religious, and cultural landscapes that I traverse in my ethnographic research. The empirical project that was undertaken as part of my PhD research explored Muslim women’s experiences

HOEL embodying the Field 29


in relation to sexual dynamics and marital relationships. One of the aims of this project was to highlight women’s engagement with, and production of, reli-gious meaning, and to analyse the various ways in which religious discourses are embodied in intimate relationships and more broadly, in everyday life.

Due to the apartheid history of South Africa, most of the Muslim women who participated in this research project reside in areas that were formerly desig-nated to “Coloured,” “Indian,” and “Black” South Africans in terms of apartheid law. More than a decade into the new democracy, there is still a significant socio-economic gap that is deeply racialized. Thus, the majority of South Africans mar-ginalized under apartheid continue to live in growing impoverished areas that are also distinctly marked by high levels of violent crime and HIV prevalence.

The vignette in the beginning of this paper presents a slice of the context expe-rienced on my ethnographic journeys. The communities that I navigated through are significantly marked by gangsterism, drug abuse and high levels of gender-based violence. The fact that I was dependent on public transport granted me an opportunity to experience some of the topographical texture that my interview-ees experience. More so, the vignette is intended to draw attention to the various ways in which doing research always is an embodied practice. As such, this article addresses a critical gap in the field of sociology of religion, namely, the absence of methodological transparency and engagement pertaining to researchers’ own bodily presence in fieldwork.1 While acknowledging researchers’ commitments to engage and explore the intimate workings of religion in the everyday life of indi-viduals and communities, often highlighting the importance of the body in reli-gious practice, as well as innovative theoretical frameworks related to religion and embodiment (e.g. Brown, 1988; Mellor and Shilling, 1997 and 2010), research-ers’ reflections on their own embodied performances and emotional responses in the field are surprisingly absent. Thus, in the following sections of this article I draw extensively on feminist theoretical insights in order to make visible critical methodological considerations deemed valuable for cultivating a thorough self-reflexive research practice.

1. See Gilliat-Ray’s excellent paper “Body-works and Fieldwork: Research with Brit-ish Muslim Chaplains” (2010) for a pointed critique of researchers’ lack of reflection con-cerning their own bodies in the field, and relatedly, the various ways in which the intricate bodily relationships between researcher and researched constitute and indeed generate the ethnographic field. In reflecting on her own embodied engagement when interviewing and shadowing Muslim chaplains, Gilliat-Ray presents an astute account of the complexi-ties that emerge when paying attention to our own body in the fieldwork process.



2 PowerDynamicsandPositionalityResearch relationships are situated and mediated along a range of symbolic and actual constellations of power. Particularly among committed feminists in the social sciences, debates around diversity with regard to gender, race, nationality, sexual orientation, class and age are central to analysing the nature of research relationships (e.g. Arendell, 1997; Boonzaier, 2008; Roberts, 1981; Stanley, 1990; Wolf, 1996). Particular attention must be given to how the researcher’s posi-tioning in relation to intersecting locations of power impact upon her research findings (e.g. Bhavnani, 1988; DeVault, 1999; 1994; Harding, 1987; Minh-ha, 1989; Oakley, 1981; Williams, 1996).

I find the research methodology developed by Donna Haraway (1988) particu-larly useful with regard to examining the potential operations of power that can function in various research relationships. Haraway outlines three key concepts that the researcher should take account of in any feminist project: accountabil-ity, positioning and partiality. Accountability refers to the researcher’s commit-ment to not reproduce the divisions of gender expressed within the dominant paradigms, consequently reinforcing stereotypes about a particular group of women. This does not mean, however, that the researcher should avoid writ-ing about experiences of marginalization or experienced power imbalances that the respondents express. Rather, accountability refers to the researcher’s com-mitment as a feminist to reflect on these matters in her research report, so as to make explicit the contextual relations of power operating when producing situ-ated knowledges.2

Haraway’s emphasis on positioning refers to the varying levels of micro-pol-itics that occur during research encounters. She argues that the research report should include a discussion of, or at least make reference to, the relationship between the researcher and the researched that foregrounds how various power relations might have influenced the research interaction. Lastly, partiality refers to questions of difference. It is salient that the researcher reflects on the possi-bility of multiple subjectivities present within a research encounter and also the plurality of views expressed in the total research sample so as to avoid generaliza-tions and monolithic representations (Haraway, 1988).3 These three key concepts,

2. Haraway’s approach is premised on the notion that all knowledge production is sit-uated in particular historical processes. She argues that “Feminist objectivity means quite simply situated knowledges” (1988: 581). Consequently, knowledge production is always embodied and partial.

3. See also Kum Kum Bhavnani’s article “Tracing the Contours: Feminist Research and Feminist Objectivity” (1994) to see one way in which the principles of Haraway’s feminist objectivity are being applied.



accountability, positioning and partiality, provide us with important epistemolog-ical keys for ways in which to think about the research material and the process of analysis, as well as to cultivate reflexive ethnography.

Considering Haraway’s notion of accountability in relation to my own empiri-cal project, I was of course cognizant of the existing dominant paradigms, pene-trating western contexts in particular, that often portray Islam as homogenously violent and androcentric, and Muslim women as victims in need of liberation from Muslim men and Islam. One of the anxieties that I had as a non-Muslim Nor-wegian researcher was that I did not want to reiterate or reinforce these nega-tive stereotypes, while at the same time rendering visible the distinct religious, socio-political, and patriarchal terrain that my respondents inhabited. Thus, in my research I paid increasing attention to the local politics of domination/sub-jugation as opposed to relativizing grand narratives that universalize women’s oppression. In my interviews, one of the ways in which localized matrices of power became apparent was through exploring the category of belief. Religious belief appeared to be a tremendous source of strength for many respondents. For some respondents, their belief in a merciful and compassionate God enabled ingenu-ity and resourcefulness when having to deal with challenging, sometimes brutal, marital relationships. Other respondents, who experienced dire financial con-straints, expressed that God’s presence in their lives provided a sense of security, kept them centred, and enabled them to continue surviving through conditions of poverty, violence and drugs. Yet for others, the donning of external markers of religious identity (e.g. Muslim dress) not only expressed religious belief and piety, but was also central to the ways in which they navigated their harsh and precari-ous context. In other words, the Muslim garb was perceived by some respondents to act as a protective fabric, shielding them from violent muggings and sexual assaults. Interestingly then, by exploring the category of religious belief, differ-ent and diverse localized relations of power emerged through respondents’ nar-ratives – constituting and producing subjective, partial and situated knowledges.

Reflecting more thoroughly on Haraway’s conceptualizations of positioning and partiality in research, and relatedly, my own participation in the production of situated knowledges, I begin by recounting an intriguing discussion that took place when presenting this research project to a local Muslim NGO. After intro-ducing the topic of research, my PhD supervisor (who is a South African Mus-lim woman of Indian ancestry) and I introduced the qualitative methods to be employed when collecting the empirical data. Interestingly, when reflecting on some of the questions that formed part of our interview guide, it was suggested to us by the participants that they would rather want to speak to me about their inti-mate experiences than to engage in conversation with my supervisor, although



they shared national, religious and racial markers of identity. Their reasoning was premised on the understanding that a non-Muslim western researcher might be perceived as less likely to impose value judgement on respondents’ experi-ences and decisions that they made within intimate relationships, particularly if these decisions jarred with dominant understandings of Islam.4 Hence, the advan-tages that might come with shared identity traits, for example, the possibility of enhanced rapport and understanding, must not be confused with shared views or experiences, nor does it automatically remove relationships of power.5

Along with the multiple locations of sameness and difference that a researcher can possess, I agree with Razavi (1992: 161) who argues that “By virtue of being a researcher, one is rarely a complete insider anywhere.” By extension, I argue that a researcher is never fully an insider, nor, never fully an outsider. By moving like a pendulum along the insider/outsider continuum, a shifting interactional process in which the relationship between the researcher and the respondent is formed, there is an opportunity to explore the multiple subjectivities of both researcher and respondent. Consequently, by exploring what is unfamiliar to us, in the words of Julia Kristeva (1991), we also encounter the “stranger within.” Hence, research encounters have the potential to be co-constructions in which redefinitions of the insider/outsider binary can take place in ways that are more meaningful and inclusive than an “either/or” paradigm.

My own “outsider” positioning, I argue, is more illustrative of fluid and pro-cessual research dynamics, marked by moments of convergence and moments of dissonance.6 Clearly inscribed with external markers of difference, I also experi-

4. This particular argument echoes aspects of the critique posed by some scholars regarding the complexity of undertaking research from an “insider-perspective.” For exam-ple, in the context of shared racial identity between the researcher and the researched, Hurd and McIntyre (quoted in Erasmus, 2000: 74) argue that “sameness distances the par-ticipants (researcher and researched…) from the critical reflexive research process and privileges one point of view over another.” Hence, in research encounters where assump-tions of sameness exist, there is a danger of imposing views onto individuals due to pre-conceived notions of sameness. In addition, assumptions of sameness can also lead to a negligence of reflexivity in the research process.

5. This is not to say that research driven by an “outsider-perspective” is any less biased or partial, nor that critical reflexivity is habitually inculcated throughout the research pro-cess. Historically, ethnographic accounts driven by an “outsider-perspective” have been critiqued due to underlying ideological elements of ethnocentrism, misrepresentations and cultural hegemony that characterizes many of these studies. See, for example, critique offered by Mohanty (1991); Fine and Weis (1998); Patai (1991); Visweswaran (1994).

6. Many contemporary social science researchers acknowledge the fluidity of posi-tions that shape the relationship between researcher and respondent, see, for example, Alcoff (1995); Best (2003); Hellawell (2006); Jaschok and Jingjun (2000); Naples (2003); Sherif



enced primary human relationalities that produced relations of power that were seemingly unpredictable and continuously shifting, as opposed to rigidly fixed. Although I was “in charge” of asking the interview questions, the intimate topic of my research project elicited many questions directed towards my own experi-ences – as an embodied human being with a particular history. Respondents would ask me a variety of questions, from the nature of my own intimate relationship, including experiences of infidelity and abuse, to questions of self-masturbation and preferred sexual positions. Furthermore, respondents’ surprising and often chal-lenging requests, the unexpected family visits, and the carefully chaperoned ‘walk-ing about’ in respondents’ local surroundings, made transparent the composite and interactional ways of power.

Respondents’ diverse narratives illustrate the production of situated knowl-edges in that difference also exists within particular localized lifeworlds. In my interview encounters I was acutely aware of the fact that Muslim women’s expe-riences are dependent on, shaped by and produced through a multiplicity of loca-tions, including geographical context, political landscape, religious persuasion, upbringing, education, experiences of marginalization, and so on. Consequently, the experience of being a South African Muslim woman can never be identical for any two women. Furthermore, in every research encounter, each of my respon-dents occupied and moved between several subject positions such as: intimate lover, wife, second wife, mother, divorcee, widow, recovering drug addict, and vic-tim of marital abuse or rape. I spoke to abled bodies and disabled bodies, terminally ill bodies and healthy bodies, broken bodies and healed bodies; women who self-identified as feminists and anti-feminists, gender-activists and ANC-supporters, Malay, Indian and coloured Muslims, and so on. This subjective elasticity is illus-trative of the messiness of embodied and lived realities that are continuously pro-duced and in process. The cultivation of self-reflexivity throughout the research process enables one to pay more attention to respondents’ fluid identities, con-tradictions, mobile positionalities, multiple subjectivities and ambivalences.7 It is within this methodological framework that I identify my own positioning and also recognize the multiple subject positions that I myself move between. The fol-lowing section of this article engages the importance of the body as a site through which these flexible categories of positioning and power are inscribed.

(2001). Thus, the rigid construction of the insider/outsider binary, where the researcher occupies a position of “either/or,” is losing currency within certain segments of social sci-ence research.

7. See, for example, the work of Mama (1995), Callaway (1992) and Hastrup (1992).



3 TheBodyinTheoryandResearchSince the late 1970s, “the anthropology of the body” has emerged as an impor-tant field of study. In the social sciences and humanities, in particular, the body has become the epistemological and ontological site through which relations of power, agentival capacity and structures of oppression have been explored and interrogated (e.g. Featherstone and Turner, 1991; 1995). One of the most signifi-cant insights that can be gleaned from the anthropological literature on the body is the body as the locus of experience (e.g. Csordas, 1994). Understanding experi-ence as bodily and embodied distinctly reconfigure the Cartesian split subject. In other words, the body/mind dualism that has informed much scholarly research and methodology, religious discourses on the body included, is replaced by stress-ing the interdependent and dynamic nature of the body and mind in the con-struction of experiential realities.

Feminist theorists and anthropologists have significantly contributed to the flourishing scholarship on the body and embodiment by focusing on the gen-dered, sexualized and racialized body, in particular (e.g. Grosz, 1994 and 1995; Price and Shildrick, 1999; Butler, 1993; Bakare-Yusuf, 1999). By placing intersec-tional and multi-layered bodies at the centre of analysis, feminists destabilize and reconstitute hierarchical and dualistic thinking within which problematic cat-egorical polarizations of men/women, mind/body, culture/nature, and so on, exist. Furthermore, the body in feminist literature also extends to the dimensions of the symbolic, imagined and the spiritual, as equally important sites critical for the transformation of corporeal and material gendered power relations (e.g. Coakley, 1997; Bynum, 1991; Schimmel, 1997; Haraway, 1997).

Together with the feminist concerns outlined above, the works of the seminal theorists Foucault (1977), Bourdieu (1984; 1990), and Merleau-Ponty (1962; 1965) are invaluable to scholars who seek to take the body and embodiment seriously. Thomas Csordas argues that “the work of these three thinkers taken together established the intellectual topology of embodiment as an indeterminate meth-odological field” (2011: 138). He contends that the theories proposed by these three thinkers, in mutually enhancing ways, elicit significant modes through which to theorize the inextricable link between our bodies and the world.

For Foucault, discourse and power are crucial to understanding the various ways in which the subject is constituted in the world. In Foucauldian terms, dis-course refers to institutions and social practices that together with knowledge systems inform and create subjectivities. In other words, subjectivity is under-stood to be an effect of discourse. In his influential book, Discipline and Punish (1977), Foucault traces the various ways that changing disciplinary bodily prac-tices reflect a history, or genealogy of power. Of particular interest here is the



emergence of what Foucault calls the “modern soul,” which is “born…out of methods of punishment, supervision and constraint” (1977: 29). The birth of the “modern soul” notably transforms the kinds of power exercised upon the body. According to Foucault, discourses are not only apparatuses of power but also sites for contestation and resistance. The notion that power is relational means, among other things, that power arises and is constituted within and through interper-sonal relationships, social institutions, and in contexts where social interaction among various groups of people takes place. In addition, power is understood to be non-subjective. This does not mean, however, that individuals cannot exercise power, but rather that individuals do not have ownership over power or intrinsic power. Rather, individuals partake in power and in the construction of relation-ships of power (McLaren, 2002: 37–41).

Merleau-Ponty’s analyses of perception, as articulated in Phenomenology of Per-ception (1962), critically interrogate the nature of bodily existence and our rela-tion to the world from the perspective of the “prereflective ground of experience” (Semonovitch and DeRoo, 2010: 10). In other words, for Merleau-Ponty, bodily and embodied experiences form the basis of our existence and “being-in-the-world.” This philosophy of embodiment reflects a remarkable post-dualistic thinking in that it suggests that consciousness is always and only embodied, holistically integrated into the enfleshed subject. Merleau-Ponty’s position also distinctly departs from that of Foucault, particularly in that our bodies inhabit the world in ways that manifest a certain level of intentionality. Csordas (2011: 140) labels this notion of being in the world “raw existence,” which he explains as “ener-getic intentionality without yet being fully formed subjectively.” Furthermore he argues that “Our bodies-in-the-world are neither passive nor inert – they are not ‘just there.’ It is more accurate to say that we are bodies toward the world, bound to it by the web on intentional threads that issue from us.” Hence, the body is sit-uated at the nexus where embodiment becomes a way of folding into the world, structured by material possibilities and dynamic relationalities.

For Bourdieu, the bodily subject does not possess intentionality but expresses agency through an internalized habitus that is a reflection of broader discur-sive limitations and restrictions as well as possibilities for change (1990: 50–51). Bourdieu’s notion of habitus lies at the centre of his engagement of the relation-ship between our body and the world within which the subject is understood to be both constituted by society, and its maker. Hence, we find in Bourdieu’s work a dialectical or reciprocal relationship between the body and the world, which is “a simultaneous co-production of social reality by world and body” (Csordas, 2011: 140). The habitus becomes the intersectional site through which the subject navigates familiar situations and topographies – producing histories, actions and



practices, while concomitantly being controlled and regulated by its surround-ing environment.

From the philosophical insights of these three thinkers one can argue that the relationship between the body and the world is a contested site in that the subject is theorized as an intentional producer (Merleau-Ponty), as a product of discourse (Foucault), and as a reciprocal agent that is both constituted and constitutes (Bourdieu). However, as argued by Csordas (2011), taken together these theo-ries provide us with valuable epistemological keys for ways to think about bod-ies, embodiment, being, relationalities and intersecting constellations of power.

In my own fieldwork, these intricate strands of theorization offer a reflective lens through which to approach and understand religiously situated bodies. In particular I would like to highlight the category of religious ideals or virtues as a way through which to exemplify the interplay of these theoretical perspectives. The virtue of sabr (patience) was often brought into conversations concerning religious identity, embodiment and experiential realities. Sabr can be understood to mean “to persevere in the face of difficulty without complaint,” and is con-ceived by many Muslims as one of the ideals of the virtuous self (Mahmood, 2001: 220). Many of my respondents asserted that the embodiment of sabr, as one way of cultivating the spiritual self, constituted and strengthened their connected-ness to God. Living with sabr was seen as both a process of becoming and a way of being Muslim. However, by embracing sabr as a way of folding into the world, one does not necessarily reduce pain or injustices inflicted upon one’s person. Many of my respondents narrated painful experiences of marital abuse and violence, as well as financial hardships. The cultivation and embodiment of sabr engendered the ability to endure and persevere through these difficult conditions. However, sabr could also be understood as a symbolic instrument that maintained inegali-tarian gender dynamics and, in fact, effectively and perniciously curbed agenti-val capacity. The religious virtue of sabr presents to us fascinating, yet ambiguous layers of meaning. On the one hand, sabr is intentionally cultivated and embod-ied by believers in order to be and become a certain kind of person. Particular lived experiences, coupled with profound God-consciousness, inform and may strengthen an individual’s capacity for sabr. On the other hand, sabr forms part of a particular religious discourse within which complex interpersonal relation-ships, and relationships between believers and God, is lived. The virtue of sabr becomes a site where power is wielded, in and through these intricate relation-ships, and illustrates the relational nature of power in corporeal and spiritual interactions.

In what follows, I outline three case studies based on my own experiences of doing research, that are meant to illustrate the complex and sometimes



challenging ways that research encounters expose various levels of intimacy, vul-nerability and affect. These case studies also demonstrate the various ways in which bodies are vessels of meaning and meaning-making, at times, empowered and loud, but also, bereft and silent.8

4 EmbodyingtheResearchRelationship:TheDynamicsofHealingThe dynamic nature of in-depth interviews affords opportunities for self-disclo-sure and meaningful exchange. Simultaneously, the quasi-counselling style that in-depth interviews often resemble can elicit, for some respondents, elements of healing and consolation. During the course of my fieldwork I found it notewor-thy that respondents were willing to share very intimate details about their past and present experiences in marriage, often exposing their own vulnerability and continuing need for healing. I recollect narratives that were fragmented by tears, silences, and embraces. Many respondents disclosed that they were grateful for the opportunity to share previously untold stories and often expressed that it was liberating to finally “get this off my chest.”

Simultaneously, I have fond memories of the countless cups of tea and coffee, homemade koeksisters with coconut sprinkles and chicken breyani savoured whilst conversing on the subject of meaningful existence. These memorable research encounters draw attention to the various ways in which research relationships are developed through embodied interactions, subtly interlocking the researcher with the researched in ways that exceeds the dualistic category of body/mind.

Fayrooz was the first Sufi spiritual healer that I ever had the pleasure of meet-ing. We met at a workshop on natural and prophetic medicine that I was invited to attend in order to present my PhD project on Muslim women’s experiences in marriage and understandings of Islam on matters of sexuality. Of course, I was hoping that there might be women present at this workshop that would like to be part of the research project that I was presenting. After the workshop concluded I ended up having a long conversation with Fayrooz about the workshop, which had caused a lot of commotion and anxiety among some participants who felt uneasy about particular Islamic esoteric elements that were brought into the con-versation (i.e. the presence of djinn, beings created of smokeless flame as opposed to humans who are created by clay and light). Fayrooz, who then revealed to me that she was a Sufi spiritual healer, explained to me that many Muslims today are trying to deny the presence of djinn, and what had happened in the workshop was

8. All the names in the following sections of this article are made up in order to protect the identities of the respondents participating in this research project.



that a djinn had appeared and one participant who clearly sensed its presence started to loudly recite a prayer for protection. Our conversation turned to the topic of women’s understandings of Islam and Fayrooz expressed a keen interest to be a respondent in the project, and we scheduled to meet at her house a few weeks later.

On the day of the interview I was very excited about meeting Fayrooz. I had thought a lot about her during the weeks following the workshop, in part due to her notable charismatic personality. This rainy winter morning Fayrooz wel-comed me into her home. Her house was inhabited by a number of cats and dogs; however, it was her two exquisite parrots that caught my attention. Fayrooz, who went into the kitchen in order to prepare tea, told me that they loved having con-versations with people and that I should not be afraid to give it a shot. I decided to start out with the rather predictable “Hi, how are you?” – not sure of what to expect in return. The parrots responded harmoniously “hello, assalamu-alaikum” – this was the beginning of my first meaningful parrot-conversation. The parrots eloquently switched between English, Afrikaans, and Arabic, and their vocabu-lary was very impressive. In addition, the parrots were expert sound imitators. In particular, their cat and ringtone-imitations and the carbon-copy emulation of Fayrooz’s laughter were striking. Fayrooz explained to me that her animals some-times feature in her Sufi healing practice, which she operates from her house. She invited me into the room where she receives her clients. The room was dec-orated with posters depicting people in meditative positions, chakra diagrams and colour charts. Incense gently filled the room. I thought about how intrigu-ing it was that our interview was to take place in the room where so many people came to confront their traumas and dejections. In my research experience thus far, I was often faced with my respondents’ emotive and sometimes painful nar-ratives, resulting in considerable self-reflection and introspection. This room so delicately spoke to experiences of pain and suffering, yet also, extended possibili-ties of mending what was broken.

Fayrooz initiated our conversation with a surprising request. She insisted that after telling me her story she needed to heal me so that the balance in my soul could be restored after being exposed to traumatic recounts of her experiences. I was instantly shaken out of my researcher comfort zone, but more so, having to confront my own “spiritual-healing-scepticism.” I was astounded by my own feel-ings of discomfort but simultaneously felt that I was drawn into an unfamiliar, yet fascinating paradigm of meaning and meaning-making. So, I decided to acqui-esce to her request. This captivating “intervention” by Fayrooz raises a number of interesting questions with regard to the relationship between the researcher and the researched. In particular, I am drawn to the innovative ways in which



relations of power are negotiated in this situation. Through her insistence of needing to heal me, Fayrooz asserted a form of power that ultimately laid the foundation for our research engagement and in many ways reversing the rela-tions of power between the researcher and the researched. Also, Fayrooz clearly felt a sense of responsibility from the perspective of being a healer.

Interestingly, in my interview with Fayrooz, the quasi-counselling style of in-depth interviews was reconfigured in such a way that it opened up a space for a disclosure that was subject to healing of the researcher. In contrast to method-ological ideals of neutrality and detachment, which in many ways presupposes non-involvement through maintaining a static division between the researcher and the researched, this particular research encounter became premised on, and framed through, a kind of subjective and embodied engagement that required my own personal involvement and participation in the research process.

The healing ritual started with Fayrooz telling me to close my eyes and relax, and then she gently placed my hands in hers. She started to sing a melodious song in an unfamiliar language, farsi I think she said. She told me to concentrate on the penetrative and powerful sounds that tenderly radiated from her lips. This particular experience evoked strong feelings in me and I felt that my sensuous body responded to Fayrooz’s mellow song. Afterwards, my immediate memo-ries, imagery and emotions that evolved and transpired through Fayrooz’s pain-ful narratives of rape, infidelity, and the death of her husband were gently coated and fluctuated toward feelings of interconnectedness, tranquillity and silence. In my interview with Fayrooz, her religious belief and spiritual connectedness con-stituted the very context through which her lived experience was articulated. Fayrooz constantly expressed her belief in a merciful and loving God, providing her with profound strength and vitality. Clearly, empowering symbolizations of God generated an individual generous self that engaged in an ethics of care and compassion.

My research experience with Fayrooz, I would argue, transcends particular categories or markers of identity in that it allows for reflections on the nature of being human in a particular spatial and temporal embodied space. When we as researchers enter into relationships with participants, we are always embedded in a primary and profoundly human relation. The various ways in which our bodies respond to our interviewees’ narratives, with gentle affect and ambiguous emo-tions, express something about our own humanness and ability to relate humanely to our respondents. Furthermore, it is arguably through human encounters that our bodies become vehicles of meaning and express emotional capacities, not as bodies with clearly delineated borders, but as fluid bodies, as bodies of blood and water, relating to other bodies situated in complex social contexts.



5 EmbodyingtheImpairedBody:TheDynamicsofVulnerabilityOne afternoon in my office the phone rings, the woman on the other end of the line presents herself as Ghameeda. She had heard about my research project from a friend and she wonders whether it is still possible for her to be interviewed. She adds that she really would like to share her experiences of marriage, also because I probably haven’t interviewed someone like her before. I am curious, not quite sure what she refers to. Ghameeda says that she is “paraplegic,” physically impaired. She is right; the research sample thus far has not included respondents that are physically impaired. From our telephonic conversation I am intrigued by Ghameeda’s soft and gentle voice that expressed such a profound liveliness and drive. We speak for about one hour, and I already feel a sense of closeness to her – as if we have known each other for a long time.

We are sipping tea in Ghameeda’s backyard. Ghameeda tells me that she was born two months premature. She does not believe that she was born with a dis-ability; rather she describes to me that she was “injured” during birth since she came out bottom first. In those days, she explains, people did not know how to handle someone with disability; they thought that there was no hope, no future, and as a result she felt that she was treated differently to the other children in the neighbourhood. She explains how all the kids she knew got to go to school, whereas she had to remain at home. She found this incredibly unfair as there was nothing wrong with her mind. Early on, before she had a wheelchair, she slowly discovered how her body functioned and the kinds of movements she was able to perform. When she realised that she was able to use her arms to crawl, it felt like an unbelievable victory.

Ghameeda’s narration of childhood memories, teenage crushes, and adult undertakings are clearly marked by her exceptional courage and persistence to excel beyond people’s expectations of her. Words like limitation, constraint, inad-equacy, shortcomings or disadvantage have no place in Ghameeda’s lifeworld. She has a sharp and gifted tongue, incisive humour and a beautiful smile. However, Ghameeda also invites me into a world of painful and agonizing experiences. She recounts stories about childhood sexual molestation, where feelings of powerless-ness and dependency supersede that of individual ambition and aspiration. She compares herself to a cockroach that walks up the wall in its own speed, but the minute it falls on its back it is totally hopeless. This analogy etches its way into my own being as I try to imagine what it must feel like to be lying on my back, unable to move, unable to kick or push, unable to stop what is about to happen to me.

Ghameeda tells me about her ex-husband who occasionally threatened to kill her by holding a knife against her throat. However, she also describes moments of



marital bliss, particularly through her experience of sexual pleasure. She describes the feeling of being naked and exposed in front of her husband for the first time, the discomfort she felt and her husband’s gentle touch that enabled her to feel good about herself, growing into a confident sexual being. The birth of their daughter, an almost unimaginable moment in her life, so wonderfully indescribable, it still brings tears to her eyes. Her ex-husband’s death, the discovery of his secret mar-riage to another woman, Ghameeda’s subsequent breakdown and admittance to a clinic. However, it is while describing her current marriage that Ghameeda softly starts to weep. She explains how unhappy she is, how she cannot stand her hus-band and that she doesn’t love him, in fact, she expresses that she feels like she is “living in hell.” I can’t help but cry with her, all the while knowing that the hus-band she is describing with such repugnancy is sitting inside the house, waiting for us to finish our conversation so that he can drop me off in town. I am worried that he might have listened in on our conversation and feel the urgent need to protect Ghameeda. I put my arms around her while I cautiously glance at the win-dows, expecting to see his face protruding through the curtains. I did not see him.

My encounter with Ghameeda brought my attention to my emotional responses as a researcher. In many interviews I often felt that my external markers of iden-tity, in particular, played a secondary role to that of my ability to respond empa-thetically and emotionally to respondents’ narratives. It is my experience that it is impossible to separate yourself from the field of inquiry, be it emotionally or otherwise. Relationalities between the researcher and the researched develop through embodied encounters where moments of vulnerability might surface as the node through which the researcher must carefully navigate her own posi-tioning vis-à-vis her respondents. There is no research manual or guidebook that prepares you for these kinds of research engagements. How your own sensuous body responds at a particular temporal moment, experiencing convergence, con-flict, or despondency; these are times at which the body speaks. It might be useful to reflect on these moments as moments of in-between-ness, where the emo-tional and affective interaction between the researcher and researched exceeds positionality and locatedness; where precarious bodies interact in unfolding pro-cesses that are ultimately about embodied being.

I met with Ghameeda several times after our first encounter. We met at dif-ferent arenas, creating new spaces for meaningful conversations. We continued to talk about her current marriage. She explained to me that things were better now and that her husband tried his best, paying more attention to her needs. On one of our meetings, at a coffee shop, Ghameeda put forth an unexpected request. She asked me whether I could assist her in going to the bathroom. She said that there were only a few people that she entrusted this task and that she felt that



I had become a friend that she trusted and felt safe with. Although, she could have asked her husband who was strolling around the area where we were sit-ting, she decided to ask me. I felt honoured and also moved by her statement. Simultaneously, I felt slightly anxious. My anxiety predominantly derived from my own inexperience, but also, in all honesty, whether I actually wanted to do it. While there was never a doubt in my mind that I would assist her, I couldn’t help but feeling pulled into a situation beyond my control. I believe that my felt anxi-ety also indicated something about the limitations or boundaries of my own per-sonal bodily space vis-à-vis other bodies, and that the prospect of crossing my own perimeters of bodily comfort generated this unsettling anxiety.

In this particular situation, how are relations of power reconfigured in ways that lay bare a certain sense of mutual vulnerability? For Ghameeda, entrusting me with this personal and intimate task is seemingly a declaration of trust as well as a practical necessity, while simultaneously, exposing a level of her own vulner-able dependency. For me, vulnerability arises through the nexus of the interper-sonal and subjective. The experience of sharing a space that for me is an intimate and individual space evoked a new and unfamiliar kind of relationality that brought to my attention my own frailty. Although, as argued by Carol Thomas (1999: 124), the relationship between the “impaired” and the “non-impaired” is already fraught due to an unequal distribution of power, suggesting that “those who are socially constructed as ‘impaired’ ([are] the relatively powerless) and those who are identified as ‘non-impaired’ or ‘normal’ in society ([are] the rel-atively powerful),” there are occasions through which this discernible binary becomes more ambiguous and porous.

I find it important to take a moment to pause and reflect on how power might intersect with the notion of being vulnerable. As researchers, drawing on Fou-cauldian notions of power, we partake in power and in the construction of rela-tionships of power. We develop interview questions and seek out potential respondents, we often navigate research relationships in ways that will gener-ate fruitful results, we analyse the research material (often without any consulta-tion with our respondents) and we publish papers in an academic language that most often limits our circle of readers. However, as researchers, we also engage in research that requires a high level of personal commitment, giving of yourself in particular research encounters – not because of what you might gain in return, but because this is also an ethical and human interaction that is taking place, the building of trust, and embodying unfamiliar and at times challenging local environments. Through these imbricated nodes, the notion of being vulnerable emerges as a delicate embodied response to research relationships that generates emotional and affective sentiments.



6 EmbodyingtheField:TheDynamicsofPeople-in-ContextWhen I meet Leila for the first time she is sitting on her porch, hunched over with her head tucked away in her hands. When she sees me she stands up and bravely puts on a smile while her eyes are overflowing with tears. My hands touch hers and we silently embrace each other. We stand like that for a while. What have I just walked into? How strange it is to be embracing someone you have never met before, not even a word spoken. We enter Leila’s house and she starts to apolo-gize for the state that she is in. She tells me about her son, who is a tik addict.9 Moments before my arrival, her son was on his way out of her house with most of her valuables in order to sell them for drugs. Leila’s story is similar to that of many of my respondents, who live in areas where drugs, unemployment, woman-abuse and gangsterism are pervasive. Although the women I speak to in my research are clearly affected by these local conditions, there is also a certain disturbing sense of normality to the ways in which they express these societal dynamics.

About ten minutes into our conversation a woman dressed in a black hijab, covering her from head to toe, niqab concealing her face, enters the room. It is Nurunisa, Leila’s sister, who Leila had phoned when her son had started to gather together her valuables. They embrace each other and Leila retells the episode that just took place. Nurunisa explains to me that the prevalence of drugs is even worse in her area and that I should come visit her on a later occasion. In connec-tion with this, Nurunisa makes some interesting statements about her dress. She says that she “got fear” of her community and that is why the “hijab is working for me.” She narrates a story of a mugging that took place in her neighbourhood not so long ago, and that she walked straight passed without anything happen-ing to her, rather, she says, “they [the muggers] opened their doors for me,” met-aphorically indicating that the muggers had no interest in mugging her and that perhaps the underlying reason for this was her visible religiosity. Hence, in some sense, Nurunisa’s hijab stands for protection against indecent assault, which is particularly significant with regard to contemporary debates on Muslim women’s dress that often pay less attention to the reality of violence in certain societal con-texts within which many women are situated. Many respondents in this research project made reference to their dress as a form of protection. Consequently, it is possible to argue that wearing hijab can be seen as a particular social response to a violent context, paralleling that of Muslim women’s reasons for wearing hijab in

9. Local slang used for the drug methamphetamine, known amongst other things for generating intense rage.



Jahili society.10 By extension, various local contexts bear resemblance to the Jahili society where women risked being assaulted or sexually violated unless they took preventative measures. Arguably, some local South African contexts necessitate similar preventative measures.

The reason why I wished to include this specific segment in this article is twofold. First, to foreground that religion, as it is lived, is embodied in complex ways. As opposed to relativizing narratives that critically examine Muslim wom-en’s dress from the perspective of gender/power, often idealizing secular lib-eral notions of agency and personhood, I contend that there is a need to address and explore localized expressions of religiosity in order to take seriously differ-ent ways of being in the world. Second, engagement with religious identities and expressions ultimately reveal some of the topographical texture that believers inhabit. In fact, particular locations constitute the organic framework through which religions are lived, mapping out specific discursive religious formations and norms that believers embody and cultivate.

My encounter with Leila and Nurunisa (whom I later also visited) really laid bare the various ways in which research initiatives get intertwined with peo-ple’s social realities, their day-to-day challenges and struggles. I believe that it is important for researchers, who temporarily occupy and embody unfamiliar locations, to take a moment to reflect on the nature of the spaces through which we move, and its influence on the construction of the research relationship. For example, I spent a lot of time reflecting on the actual space in which most of my interviews took place, namely, in respondents’ homes. Most of my respon-dents inhabited domestic spaces which for the most part consisted of two rooms; one room where the whole family slept and one room for cooking, watching TV, and social visits. This particular spatial configuration resulted in a profound lack of privacy that unquestionably informed the dynamics of research relationships. Children continuously running in and out of the house, sometimes laughing and other times crying, curious neighbours wanting to borrow a cup of sugar or a piece of soap, and sceptical husbands who pretended to having fallen asleep in one corner of the room – all of these occurrences created opportunities for par-ticular research relationalities to unfold. The direction of the research process

10. Jahiliyyah refers to the time of ignorance and is a Qur’anic term applied by Mus-lim theologians to the period of paganism prior to the advent of Islam. As argued by many scholars of Islam, the reason for Muslim women’s wearing of hijab in Jahili society was to protect themselves from sexual harassment by hypocrites at the time of the Prophet. Through wearing the hijab, Muslim women were recognized as pious women, as opposed to prostitutes or slaves who were open to public scrutiny, see, for example, Barlas (2002: 53–58).



became ambivalently moulded and interwoven together with these contextual dynamics, often constituted through moments of laughter, amusement, worry, despair, forgetfulness and remembrance. Research encounters are thus embod-ied and shaped by the totality of “being-in-the-world,” which in this particular research project included certain contextual dynamics of scarcity and threat. Simultaneously, respondents’ experiences are articulated alongside interpersonal interactions and processes, physical and emotional, that continuously change and evolve throughout the research encounter.

7 ConclusionThe case studies presented above illustrate particular ways in which research rela-tionships develop and unfold in specific temporal contexts. By paying attention to the embodied nature of ethnographic research, this article argues that mean-ing-making is always informed and shaped by the subjective interaction of bodies in context. The notion of embodying the research relationship takes seriously the ways in which our bodies (researcher and researched) are epistemological sites that enable or facilitate possibilities for communication and understanding. How-ever, our bodies are also inscribed by culturally specific histories, situated knowl-edge, dreams and memories that through fieldwork are brought into conversation with one another. Thus, when embodying the field of inquiry, our bodies can act as powerful mediators (or barriers) delicately navigating the complicated terrain between sameness and difference.

My own research experience also reveals some of the ways in which power functions within various research encounters. Power is clearly dynamic and rela-tional, not predefined. Power gets ambivalently entwined in emerging and pro-cessual research encounters. A personal and, in my case, feminist commitment to establishing non-hierarchical and reciprocal research relationships, introduc-ing the possibility of co-creating the field of inquiry, might produce relations of power that innovatively forge and reconfigure particular ethics of engagement. At times power is structured in such a way that one feels pulled into situations that might lay bare one’s own vulnerability and frailty, other times, power gener-ates feelings of confidence and control. Clearly, power also intersects with a range of emotional registers displayed throughout an interview encounter. It is through increased attention to these shifting dynamics of power, and the intersections of power, that redefinitions of the research relationship can take place – illuminat-ing the existence of fluid identities, multiple subjectivities and mobile position-ings. Attention to the particular workings of power should also be coupled with the methodological principles of empathetic understanding and the cultivation of self-reflexivity in ethnographic research.



Oftentimes, answering respondents’ questions regarding my own experiences, I believe, led to increased levels of trust in the research relationship. The necessity for flexibility in research through the sharing of experiences also calls into ques-tion assumptions around objectivity and detachment. By actively deconstructing these archaic methodological ideals, by partaking in research, one is able to bet-ter unmask the situatedness and partiality of knowledge production. Simultane-ously, my participation in particular research encounters also brought into play substantive reflections on the nature of being human. Our affective responses to respondents’ corporeal and emotive narratives, dynamic and, at times, challeng-ing societal contexts, reveal dimensions of our own humanness in research. Put differently, by paying attention to our emotional capacities (and limitations) in this profoundly human interaction, research is also about being able to relate humanely to our respondents. This form of interaction between the researcher and the researched exceeds intersubjective communication. Rather, by taking seri-ously the body as the locus of experience the researcher engages composite modes of being, including emotional comportments, expressions, postures, movements and touch. In this way, intriguing and sometimes challenging relationalities might emerge between the researcher and the researched. Furthermore, it is through these embodied interactions that moments of mutual vulnerability might surface, where precariousness unfolds, and where distinct lifeworlds may briefly interlock.

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