Gender, Reflexivity, and Positionality in Male Research in One's Own Community With Filipino Seafarers' Wives

Authors

  • Roderick G. Galam Oxford Brookes University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-16.3.2330

Keywords:

reflexivity, positionality, fieldwork relations, male feminism, male research with female participants, representation, narratives, interviews, seafarers' wives, Ilocos Norte, Philippines

Abstract

This article reflects on the epistemological, methodological, and ethical issues related to undertaking a cross-gender research (male researcher with female participants) in one's own community. It also examines issues of analysis and representation germane to taking a gendered perspective in this study of the lives and experiences of left-behind women. The article frames the discussion of these issues within four interrelated sites or levels of reflexivity: theoretical reflexivity, gender and fieldwork relations, positionality and the insider/outsider dynamic, and representation. The conclusion reflects on the ethical obligation a researcher conducting a study in one's own community bears and the consequences of this ethical burden on representation.

URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1503139

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Author Biography

Roderick G. Galam, Oxford Brookes University

Roderick G. GALAM, PhD, is a Research Associate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany. His current three-year (2015-2018) research project, "Working for Work: Temporality, Unemployment, and Young Filipino Men's Navigation of the Future," is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [German Research Council]. From 2013-2015, he was a Postdoctoral International (POINT) research fellow at FU Berlin's Center for Area Studies and was affiliated with the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology. His sociological research include labor migration, youth unemployment, temporality, subjectivity, and family. Having also trained in comparative literature, he has published on literature and the social memory of the MARCOS dictatorship in the Philippines. His book, "The Promise of the Nation: Gender, History and Nationalism in Contemporary Ilokano Literature," was a finalist in the Philippine National Book Award.

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Published

2015-07-28

How to Cite

Galam, R. G. (2015). Gender, Reflexivity, and Positionality in Male Research in One’s Own Community With Filipino Seafarers’ Wives. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 16(3). https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-16.3.2330

Issue

Vol. 16 No. 3 (2015)

Section

Single Contributions

License

Copyright (c) 2015 Roderick G Galam

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.