Gendered challenges to fieldwork in conflict-affected areas

Abstract

This chapter takes a gendered perspective on some of the challenges and opportunities of intervention fieldwork. Based on experiences from fieldwork in Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Haiti, I consider how the doing of fieldwork, the choices we make, and the way we construct arguments on the basis of our fieldwork experiences are affected by our and others’ positionality and who “I”/“they” are; how physical and emotional stresses and (dis)comfort influence our fieldwork and subsequent analyses; and our obligations as researchers before, during, and after our (invariably imperfect) fieldwork. The chapter stresses both the contingency and co-creation of knowledge production, and how gender—and the gendered experience(s) of fieldwork—is but one factor in this process.