ABSTRACT

The optimism that accompanies the voyage into social science-related fieldwork is sometimes confronted by the ‘unanticipated’ of the field, which surges out of a perceived (in)congruence between the researcher and the settings of the site of fieldwork. Using theoretical framings from Pierre Bourdieu, I show how my habitus as a ‘Black African Male’ was perceived in a field of research that is both racialized and gendered, accounting for the several surprising and awkward moments that marked my fieldwork in Denmark and New Zealand. I begin by showing how the origins of migration studies effected the racialized composition of this field of scholarship, as well as its subsequent gendered turn. I then present my sites of fieldwork and the several encounters of the ‘unanticipated’ that engendered fieldwork reflexivity, especially as regards the unequal power relations existing in various sites of research engagements. I suggest a few fieldwork navigation strategies for researchers with comparable identities and lastly recommend that fieldwork’s awkward moments engendered by stereotypes of race and gender be made productive by way of ‘creative confrontations’.

摘要

伴随着社会科学相关田野工作的乐观情绪有时会遇到该领域的“意料之外”，这种乐观情绪源于研究者与田野工作地点之间的感知（不一致）一致性。使用皮埃尔·布迪厄 (Pierre Bourdieu) 的理论框架，我展示了我作为“非洲黑人男性”的习惯在一个种族化和性别化的研究领域中是如何被感知的，这解释了我在丹麦和新西兰的田野调查中出现的几个令人惊讶和尴尬的时刻. 我首先展示了移民研究的起源如何影响这一学术领域的种族化构成，以及随后的性别转变。然后，我介绍了我的田野工作地点以及产生田野工作反思性的“意外”的几次遭遇，尤其是关于不同研究活动场所中存在的不平等权力关系。我为具有相似身份的研究人员建议了一些田野调查导航策略，最后建议通过“创造性对抗”来使田野工作因种族和性别的刻板印象而产生的尴尬时刻变得富有成效。