Doing Fieldwork while Parenting

Abstract

Conducting fieldwork as a White woman researcher from the Global North on women’s practices of religious knowing in Benin, my work is based on multiple entwined positionalities that require critical reflection. The political categories of race, gender, age, religion, and family status at times linked, at times distanced me from my interlocutors in Benin as well as my colleagues at University of Bayreuth. This article explores the multiple ways parenting has informed my work in Benin and its institutional integration in a German Anthropology department. Using difference as a lens, I enquire how parenting, intersecting with gender, sexuality, and family normativity, has been used to undo difference during fieldwork, while exacerbating structural inequalities with reference to academic funding structures and research organization.