Ethnography, Feminist Action, and Care Work: A Personal and Minimal Reflection
No. 35 (2019-04-01)Author(s)
-
Camila Esguerra Muelle
Abstract
Objective/Context: In this article, I propose a personal reflection on how it is possible to undertake collaborative, feminist-based ethnography regarding the transnationalized care regime. This reflection is based on multi-sited ethnography I have carried out since 2007 with care workers, domestic and transnational migrants, displaced and exiled individuals who self-identify as cis and transgender women, lesbian and heterosexual women, and trans men. Methodology: I will undertake a reflection on the political, corporal, sensorial, and emotional implications of a collaborative research and action agenda, both for me as a researcher and for those individuals who have worked with me to construct a collective narrative regarding their working, employment, and living conditions as migrants, displaced people, and the exiled. Multi-sited ethnography and collaborative research imply particularities in terms of the boy, care, and the emotions in physical and symbolic displacement and the political relationships with these individuals, who are subjects with agency with respect to advocacy within the context of transnational care schemes. However, such research must avoiding ignoring the vast power disparities in the relationships that ethnography and research involve. Conclusions: To conclude, I will demonstrate how undertaking multi-sited feminist, transdisciplinary ethnographic research is always a paradoxical, incomplete, and partial exercise under constant negotiation. For this type of exercise, the postulates of feminist epistemology are useful, provided they are grounded in the local historical and political context. Originality: I hope, with this initial reflection, to contribute to a limited discussion on multi-sited ethnography based in feminism and care.
References
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1990. “Can there Be a Feminist Ethnography?”. Women and Performance. A Journal of Feminist Theory 5 (1): 7-27.
Aleksievich, Svetlana. 1988. War’s Unwomanly Face. Moscú: Progress Publishers.
Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands/La frontera. The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Book Company.
Brea, José Luis. 2007. “Cambio de régimen escópico: del inconsciente óptico a la e-image”. Revista de Estudios Visuales 2 (4): 145-163.
Craven, Christa y Dána-AinDavis, eds. 2013. “Introduction: Feminist Activist Ethnography”. En Feminist Activist Ethnography: Counterpoints to Neoliberalism in North America, editado por ChristaCraven y Dána-AinDavis, 145-166. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Esguerra Muelle, Camila. 2016. “Protocolo ético, político, epistemológico y metodológico de trabajo de campo”. Proyecto Migración y Cadenas Globales de Cuidado. Cider, Universidad de los Andes. (Sin publicar)
Esguerra Muelle, Camila. 2014. “Dislocación y borderland: una mirada oblicua desde el feminismo descolonial al entramado migración, régimen heterosexual, (pos)colonialidad y globalización”. Universitas Humanistica 78: 137-161.
Esguerra Muelle, Camila. 2013. “Saying ‘Nosotras’: Speech Acts and Collective Lesbian Identities in Colombia”. Sexuality, Culture and Politics - A South American Reader. Río de Janeiro: Cepesc: 326-345.
Esguerra Muelle, Camila, DianaOjeda y FriederikeFleischer. 2019. “Forced Displacement, International Migration and (Trans)national Care Networks: The Urban Other in Colombia and Spain”. En A Feminist Urban Theory for our Times: Reconsidering Social Reproduction, the Urban and its Constitutive Outside, editado por Linda J.Peak, ElsaKoleth y PatrickDarren. Toronto: The City Institute, York University. (En prensa)
Esguerra Muelle, Camila, IvetteSepúlveda y FriederikeFleischer. 2018. “Se nos va el cuidado se nos va la vida: migración, destierro, desplazamiento y cuidado en Colombia”. Documentos de Política 3. Bogotá: Cider, Universidad de los Andes, disponible en: https://cider.uniandes.edu.co/Documents/Publicaciones/Senosvaelcuidado_senosvalavida.pdf
Haraway, Donna. 1991. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”. En Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. The Reinvention of Nature, por Donna Haraway, 183-201. Nueva York: Routledge.
Harding, Sandra. 1991. “Feminist Standpoint Epistemology”. En Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives, por Sandra Harding, 119–137. Nueva York 119–137. New York: University Press.
Hill Collins, Patricia. 1986. “Learning from the Outsider within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminism Thought”. Social Problems 33 (6): S14-S32.
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 2000. “Global Care Chains and Emotional Surplus Value”. En: On the Edge: Living with Global Capitalism, editado por WillHutton y AnthonyGiddens, 130-146. Londres: Jonathan Cape.
Kontopoulos, Kyriakos. 1993. The Logics of Social Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lugones, María. 2008. “Colonialidad y género”. Tabula Rasa: 9. 73-101.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1973. Los argonautas del Pacífico occidental. Barcelona: Península.
Marcus, George E. 1995. “Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography”. Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 95–117.
Mauss, Marcel. 1979. “Ensayo sobre los dones, razón y forma del cambio en las sociedades primitivas”. En: Sociología y Antropología, por MarcelMauss, 155-268. Madrid: Editorial Tecnos.
Mbembe, Achille. 2011. Necropolítica. Madrid: Melusina.
Pérez-Bustos, Tania, VictoriaTobar-Roa y SaraMárquez-Gutiérrez. 2016. “Etnografías de los contactos. Reflexiones feministas sobre el bordado como conocimiento”. Antípoda. Revista de Antropología y Arqueología 26: 47-66. http://dx.doi.org/10.7440/antipoda26.2016.02
Stacey, Judith. 1988. “Can there Be a Feminist Ethnography?”. Women’s Studies International Forum: 11 (1): 21–7.
Wittig, Monique. 1992. The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Boston: Beacon Press.