Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
12-2019
Abstract
Research on gendered politics of the field has delved into the practices of accompaniment and its implications on research and knowledge production, particularly through the case of researchers’ children and partners. In comparison, the tendency to seek assistance from parents is neglected within the scholarship. Drawing on the PhD fieldwork experiences of two researchers in their “native” country, specifically a Sri Lankan researcher conducting fieldwork in Sri Lanka and a North Indian scholar researching in South India, the paper reveals parents’ contribution to the research process, in terms of enhancing researcher credibility, facilitating contact‐making and access, and providing emotional and practical care. The discussion illuminates two aspects of parents’ involvement in fieldwork: (1) how the unique nature of parent–child relationships shapes the research process at multiple stages, and (2) how the gendered notions of knowledge production result in parents’ contributions being typically unacknowledged. The paper emphasises that a researcher's positionality as a daughter shapes her ability to navigate gendered field sites in her “native” country and is implicated in the wider research process.
Keywords
Accompaniment, gender, India, knowledge production, positionality, Sri Lanka
Discipline
Asian Studies | Human Geography | Models and Methods
Publication
Area
Volume
51
Issue
4
First Page
662
Last Page
669
ISSN
0004-0894
Identifier
10.1111/area.12525
Publisher
Wiley
Citation
DE SILVA, Menusha, & GANDHI, Kanchan.(2019). “Daughter” as a positionality and the gendered politics of taking parents into the field. Area, 51(4), 662-669.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3030
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12525