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This introduction provides an overview of the themes and chapters of this volume.

The chapters illustrate current approaches to theories, research methods, pedagogy, and praxis in gender studies showing both continuity and change.

Newer approaches, gender-centered, intersectional, and global offer a critique of older ways of gathering and understanding data, ways that respond to and are impacted by social change.

The chapter and the volume are intended to encourage further advances in gender research.

This chapter analyzes the critical move in feminist scholarship to gender the discourse on risk mediation in dangerous ethnographic fieldwork, particularly in social justice research. Additionally, I draw on a reflexive analysis of my own fieldwork in Oaxaca, Mexico, to examine the intersectional impact of social location (gender, race, class, etc.) on risk management.

I synthesize key literature contributions in social science and feminist scholarship on doing dangerous fieldwork. Ethnographic data includes three months of participant observation and interviews with participants of the 2006 Oaxacan uprising.

I argue that the following themes represent axes of gendered risk mediation in social justice fieldwork: (1) the intersectional impact of social location on varied risks and the mediation of those risks, (2) impression management as an important tool for risk mediation, and (3) ethical dilemmas within risk mediation. The key dangers and risks in fieldwork include physical danger, emotional/psychological impacts, risk to research participants, ethical dangers, separation from family through international work, risk of imprisonment, and academic/professional risk.

Analysis of personal experience in the field is limited to this one researcher’s experience; however, it mirrors key themes present in the literature. Reflexive analysis of social location on risk mediation is part of a continued call by feminist ethnographers to research practical risk mediation techniques and recognize the intersectional impacts of social location on fieldwork.

This chapter provides insights that instructors of ethnographic methods might use to discuss dangerous fieldsites and how to mediate risk.

A failure to recognize risk in ethnographic research may disproportionately impact researchers most susceptible to particular risks.

Although feminist scholarship has long examined social location in fieldwork, analysis of risk management is limited. Additionally, this chapter adds to this scholarship by contributing key themes that unite the available research and a list of most-often discussed risks in fieldwork.

On the occasion of the publication of the 20th volume of the Advances in Gender Research series, this chapter reviews the series goals and previous volumes and introduces the themes and chapters of the current one.

The chapter shows both continuity and change in approaches to theories, research methods, pedagogy, and praxis in gender studies.

Newer approaches, gender-centered, intersectional and global, offer a critique of older ways of gathering and understanding data, ways that respond to and are impacted by social change.

The chapter and the volume are intended to encourage further advances in gender research.

Research has found a subgroup of conservative white males have lower perceptions of risk across a variety of environmental and health hazards. Less research has looked at the views of these “low risk” individuals in group interactions. Through qualitative analysis of a technology deliberation, we note that white men expressing low risk views regarding technologies for energy and the environment also often express high social risks around potential loss of control. We argue these risk perceptions reflect identification with corporate concerns, usually framed in opposition to government and mirroring arguments made by conservative organizations. We situate these views within the broader cultural struggle over who has the power to name and address risks.