‘Gone Native?’: Reflections of a Feminist Tightrope Walker’s Research on ‘Land Grabbing’ and the Dilemmas of ‘Fieldworking’ While Parenting

Abstract

In this chapter, Dieng ‘returns home’ to do research by drawing on Goffman’s dramaturgical analysis approach for a metaphor of fieldwork and by questioning inherited research methodologies. She analyses the challenges of conducting decolonial and feminist research, before focusing on many dilemmas of ‘fieldworking’ at home, as a woman with a baby. Dieng, a feminist ‘tightrope walker’ trying not to ‘go native,’ explores how multiple identities, gender of the researcher and the genealogy of the research topic influenced the research and vice versa. As both ‘insider’ and ‘outsider,’ the research was facilitated more by being perceived as a ‘courageous mother’ than a ‘foreign’ researcher in a society that attributes special places to mothers but not young women questioning power relations, states and companies’ land deals, and more importantly, the gender of power.