Getting over ourselves

The research field is full of suprises, and not always in the data we collect.  Rather ironically, the research field itself shows us the limitations of all the training we have endured to be able to pretend to be effective field researchers.  The lived reality of field research very often turns out to be full of the complexities and challenges no training includes, and it uncovers all of the problematic assumptions we make about a research field before we enter it.  Acknowledging these problematic assumptions is pretty embarassing, especially if we have claimed to have a lens that avoids these pitfalls, but instead falls right into them.  Sometimes we find out that we are not as made of feminist awesomeness as we'd like to think we are.

In "Can you Belly Dance?", Miraftab (2004) analyzes her experiences as a Western-trained scholar interviewing women who were heads of their households in Mexico.  Miraftab, exiled from Iran, received her doctorate in the U.S.  Her darker complexion meant she did not "look" white (where white = 'American' or 'Western'), but her Spanish was Persian-accented, so she was read as a foreigner by the women she studied.  Rather than interpret her as a privileged Western woman because of her educational background, the women in her interviews often saw her as sharing a "common identity" of being from another "'poor' country."  Due to the Western portrayal of Muslims and a recent biased television movie about Iranian gender relations, the women understood Iran to be a place that was worse for women than Mexico, and expressed sympathy for Miraftab with comments like, "you must be very happy to be here."  Moreover, the slanted Western media depiction of Persian women meant Miraftab was routinely questioned if she wore the veil and if she could belly dance.  Miraftab's status was also negotiated through the Mexican women's values, not just Western values imposed through multimedia.  Since Miraftab was childless, the women saw her as having "missed out on...a woman's only true asset." 

With this, she shows the limitations of a Western/Non-Western framework of privilege as devised by Western feminists, where Western scholars must always be prepared to account for their privilege.  This framework, she argues, indicates a superiority complex.  Through presuming we will already be in a privileged, superior position, we also presume the Global South women we interview will be "passive: objectifed, mute, and lacking any source of power vis-a-vis the researcher."  Basically, we make ourselves out to be pretentious, condescending jerks.  Our reflexivity with regard to our privilege in the research field, in this sense, is hampered because we take our superior status for granted, and, conversely, we presume our participants to be inferior and underprivileged in relation to us.

Miraftab acknowledges that she was, in many ways, in a privileged position relative to her interview participants, and it is interesting to note that the perception of her was heavily created by a dominant Western colonializing depiction.  However, the women she interviewed did not always see her as more privileged or powerful.  Miraftab's training prepared her to assume she would be in the powerful position and that this power would be taken for granted, but instead her 'superior' researcher role was interrogated, questioned, and played with because of the participant's autonomous understandings and expressions of their own power. 

The insider/outsider role is far more complex and varied than the Western/Non-Western paradigm makes it out to be.  Miraftab's experiences challenges us to not enter a research field presuming our privilege and power over the women we study is a given.  Attempts to account for our privilege/power risks "re-objectifying the subject" when we don't always have that total, overarching privilege/power to begin with.