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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.

To demonstrate why leaving the ethnographic field provides an excellent opportunity for the researcher to engage in reflexivity on all aspects of the research and especially on issues of power, age and gender.

An autobiographical reflection on a 40 year career as an ethnographer.

The autobiographical literature and the methods literature on ethnography has neglected leaving the field, and the opportunities that process provides for reflectivity. The author reflects on issues of power, age and gender as they have been implicated in the various fieldsites studied in her career. The particular field site featured centrally is two martial arts, savate and capoeira.

To improve the quality of reflexive writing on leaving the field.

This chapter presents a methodological discussion about ethnographic practice from a feminist perspective that contributes to the field of communication studies methodology and theory. The ethnography engages Black (Afro-Brasileiro and African-American) and economically disadvantaged youth from Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and New Orleans (USA) regarding their strategies of social and media visibility. This multi-sited ethnography proposes to improve the objectives of ethnography through theoretical flexibility, liberation from a priori assumptions, greater representation of the voices of community members, disavowal of the imperatives of positivist work, and abiding respect for the “other.”

Due to its relatively embryonic status as a research methodology, virtual ethnography has not yet become a prominent methodology in higher education research. Considering the overwhelming popularity of social media among college students and its increasing use in the higher education community as marketing and communication tools, this methodology warrants further exploration in the higher education field. As modern technology and the prevalence of the internet have transformed daily life, virtual ethnography has recently emerged as a new frontier in qualitative research. With the aim of introducing virtual ethnography as a methodological lens, this chapter discusses logistical and ethical issues associated with it in the context of a research project that examined the interactions between a group of newly admitted students at a private university within a university-operated Facebook group. The chapter begins with the definition of virtual ethnography, and briefly reviews its emergence and use in the existing literature. Then it discusses the implementation of the methodology, with a focus on methodological difficulties in the higher education research setting. Finally, it offers the lessons learned from the research project and provides suggestions for future use of the methodology in the higher education research field.

In this study we examine how doing research on gender impacts identity, sense of self, and relation to community; and how fieldwork is mediated by gender structures.

We draw on feminist epistemology, qualitative methodologies, and critical pedagogies to analyze the fieldwork experiences of 15 women students and nine men fieldwork partners in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan.

By conducting fieldwork which challenged gender norms, students and partners gained greater awareness of themselves and confidence. Their actions challenged the appropriate place of women (and minority ethnicities) as perceived by research participants in these communities. The experience rendered the community a site of hope and learning for them, working to empower them as well as building relationships grounded in lived experiences with their communities.

Women’s voices are more prominent in this analysis than men’s.

This chapter points to the potentially empowering aspects of doing gender-related fieldwork in the developing context, as well as how gender and other power structures mediate fieldwork experiences in Muslim communities in South Asia.

This chapter adopts a post-development framework in combination with a spatial lens exploring how actors in two localities in the South-East and North-East in the post-colonial setting of Benin (West Africa) interact in mediating the policy of education decentralisation. Doing so throws into sharp relief the multiple complexities of local practices and how these impact the processes of exclusion/inclusion, mitigating the achievement of equity and decolonisation. The findings point to how paradoxically, decentralisation processes, seeking to broaden participation, result in strengthening central and municipal government entities, thereby subjugating parents' voices. Simultaneously, this chapter nuances inclusion from a spatial lens, such as the influence of NGOs in one fieldsite and the power of the central administration in the other. In light of uneven power relations in enacting Benin's decentralisation policy and the insignificance of the local specificities, this book chapter concludes that inclusion remains a challenge to deal with beyond global governance policies.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the ways in which reactive researcher collaboration helps to manage some of the challenges present in insider research.

Employing (auto)biographical reflections from across two different case-studies, the authors explore the ways in which reactive collaboration is enmeshed with issues associated with researching the familiar in a marketized university environment.

The authors develop the term “reactive collaboration” to explore the ways in which insider research projects have to deal with a range of challenges from within their own research community. Reactive collaboration is as much about insider research solidarity as it is with reacting to anticipated and unanticipated events during the research process (and how inside researchers do and do not deal with them). Reactive collaboration highlights the successes as well as the failures of insider researchers negotiating complex research situations.

The authors show how reactive collaboration occurs in challenging research environments, including the joys, sorrows and failures. The authors argue that the challenges and benefits of insider research can be helpfully crystalised through reactive collaboration.

The purpose of this paper is to offer theoretical and methodological guidance for ethnographers of finance and financialization. It critiques the notion of financialization as a macro process and argues for more in-depth ethnographic studies of professional financial actors.

The author analyzes existing ethnographies of financial “elites” and “non-elites” and draws on his years of employment at two contrasting British retail stockbroking firms. The concepts of “identity” and “self” are used to analyze the ways in which professional financial actors are shaped by their activities and working cultures.

The processes through which financial actors are constructed and the consequent ways in which they come to understand their professional selves are influenced by a variety of dynamics: occupational and organizational cultures and practices, the nature of the work itself, technological development, and social interactions with colleagues.

The paper demonstrates the situated nature of financial action and suggests that future research grapples with these dimensions.

The application of an ethnographic perspective to British retail stockbroking and the method of “ethnographic reflection” evoked to achieve this are new contributions. The broad analysis of ethnographies of finance through the lens of identity offers a fresh view of the literature. The paper may be of interest to those wishing to study stockbrokers, financial actors, and financial organizations, as well as those in the social sciences, more generally, who are interested in the micro-dynamics of organizations, financialization, and capital circulation.