Living Fieldwork, Writing Ethnography

Abstract

In this chapter, I shall examine the process of conducting research and the underlying rationale for doing so in relation to this text. This is not and does not pretend to be ‘classic ethnography’ in the conventional sense of ‘establishing relationships, and by learning to see, think and be in another culture’ (Bell 1993: 1; emphasis added), partly because I was not in another culture as such, but actually studying in and about my own culture, and with those who form part of this subculture: i.e. a select group of Egyptian feminists. Nevertheless, much of this study involves characteristics of ethnographic writing. And it is for this reason that I have engaged in the task of examining ‘living fieldwork’ in the light of feminist ethnographic and anthropological writing. Furthermore, I find inspiration in the arguments put forward by certain feminist ethnographers (Strathern 1987; Visweswaran 1988; Mascia-Lees et al. 1989; Bell 1993; Schrijvers 1993; among others), who emphasize that the gendered self-awareness and situatedness of writers² structure processes of gathering as well as of writing/authoring.

What does the ethnographer do? He [sic] writes.

(Geertz 1973)

In describing Melanesian marriage ceremonies, I must bear my Melanesian readers in mind. That in turn makes problematic the previously established distinction between writer and subject: I must know on whose behalf and to what end I write.

(Strathern 1987b; emphasis added)

I have borrowed this title from Marie Gillespie (1995: 48) since I found it to be well formulated in general and apt for my purposes in particular.