Creating Coalitions and Causing Conflicts: Confronting Race and Gender through Partnered Ethnography

Monologic Results of Dialogue: Jewish-Palestinian Encounter Groups as Sites of Essentialization

“…Such encounters are also represented as a means to disclose the intertextual and intersubjective character of culture and identity, or to bridge perspectival and positioned points of view (Markowitz 2002;Todorov 1984). These varied representations of dialogue have shaped it into a social practice, which some believe can infuse democracy with new energy (Gurevitch 2000;Habermas 1992: 447-448).…”

Conducting team ethnography with African migrants in Mexico: The dynamics of gendered and racialised positionalies in the field

“…For instance, some researchers have highlighted that different working styles and lifestyles, together with theoretical and methodological disputes, overblown egos, or simply too much time together can all lead to conflict among the researchers (Erickson and Stull, 1998). This conflictive position has been shared by other scholars who have consciously attempted to do team ethnography (see for instance Markowitz, 2002). In our case, although we had not explicitly discussed how, whether and why we were going to do a team ethnography, we found ourselves doing it in a rather unexpected manner.…”

“…During the 1990s, a plethora of texts highlighted the fallacy of the illusion of a researcher with the single purpose of gathering knowledge that is 'out there' (see for instance: Abu-Lughod, 1991). The differences in race, class and gender between researchers and the researched, and the consequent unequal distribution of power in this relationship was a key issue for discussion in this body of literature (Markowitz, 2002). Feminist scholars raised important questions concerning the process of research itself, problematising representation, and highlighting the importance of a more self-reflexive examination of the researcher's role in the process of ethnographic research, interpretation and representation (Gerstl-Pepin and Gunzenhauser, 2002).…”

“…Yet, this seemingly equalising strategy is also problematic, since 'native anthropologists' are usually of a different status group, race or gender, than the folk they study (see Vivas-Romero, 2017). Other forms of experimentation, such as 'committed anthropology' (Shokeid, 1992), or 'militant anthropology' (Scheper-Hughes, 1995), aim to respond both to the desire to learn about others within the context of difference as well as to a moral agenda for recognising the silenced 'other' (Markowitz, 2002).…”

“…Similarly, Markowitz's (2002) team ethnography aimed at producing a multi-layered, multiply-positioned ethnography to overcome the gender and race dilemmas faced while conducting research in a Black Hebrew community. Yet, this methodology ended up creating the very same problems of identity and authority claims that it intended to solve (Markowitz, 2002). Despite their benefits, team ethnographies are not free of challenges.…”