The paper would like to examine the limits of reflexivity -in a gendered perspective- in the field of security and safety research. Starting from two different fieldwork (prison ethnography and 6 month of ethnography in the project Horizon2020 Margin) the work tries to examine the limits and the challenge of the position of the researcher. Aware that the perception of insecurity, especially linked to gender, is affected by subjective variables linked to the experience, interpretative schemes and practices implemented by individual scholars, the theme of gender connected to security (and safety of the researcher) emerged in the field transversely, and this variable is essential for reasoning about methods and practices. The paper will examine how a double exposure to gender variables changes the perception of the field and influences data collection. On the one hand, in fact, in the literature it is now assumed that the gender issue modifies the relationship with the field, and the aspects of danger / risk / are often implemented. On the other hand, safety studies report that the real and perceived risk of insecurity varies according to gender for multifactorial reasons. The coexistence of the two variables therefore requires a deepening and further reflection. With respect to the first aspect, as Warren & Hackney argue, "In the 1980s, we saw a few confessional tales of sexual interest and attraction (Turnbull, 1986); at the turn of the millennium, a darker side of sexuality appeared in ethnography. Themes of bodily and sexual danger inform turn-of-the-century narratives of gendered ethnography, the bodily danger of violence a concern of both females and males, but the specifically sexual dangers of assault or harassment more salient to women in the field. ". According to the authors, it is possible to register a greater exposure to forms of violence characterizing the access of researchers to the field and their research / observation activity. Adler & Adler (1987) affirm that gender in fieldwork represents a variable in the continuum between the role of foreigners and that of a member of the context that is observed. With respect to gender as the "subject" and "object" of observation, it is useful here to recall the pioneering work of Tamar Pitch and Carmine Ventimiglia "What kind of security. Women and men in the city ", which in 2001 analyzed the so-called "City of women" both as needs and as a relationship between space and fears, identifying on the one hand an identification in the victim process and on the other the constant difficulty of getting out of the dimension of the unsolvable patérnage and criticism of the idea of the "weak" gender. As theoretical paradigms which then have a response in practices and perceptions. Even during the research fieldwork, these types of paradigms found a confirmation in the practices. To put it with Bourdieu and his "Male Domain", the genre performs a habitus that is both in the practices of the observed and in the eyes of the observers, or even more of the observers and is produced and reproduced in even very different contexts . Not only that: according to Bourgois (2001], and Nancy Scheper-Huges (with Bourgois, 2004) violence operates along a continuum that includes structural, symbolic, daily and intimate dimensions. These theoretical approaches find a correspondence in the reflections of the researcher in the field. A young single woman who spends long periods of time in these spaces presents an anomaly and is subjected to unwanted and unpleasant male advances. This reflection brings up the issue of "avoided spaces" for women. Still referring to Scheper-Huges, gender-based violence could fall within those forms of daily violence, therefore transversal and capable of producing social indifference towards brutality (1992; 1996). The lack of people occupying public outdoor spaces, especially in marginalized contexts, imposed everyday negotiation with the issue of security in the field, a dna strong visibility of the researcher, especially in public spaces. Important in this sense are the two works on gender and insecurity (Condon, Lieber, Maillochon, 2005; Lieber, 2008) which present the results of in-depth interviews of women in different neighborhoods of Paris. The objective is to deconstruct the topic, in order to highlight the social construction of insecurity in a gender-based public space, which is dominated by masculinity. The authors suggest that insecurity is crystallized during the night, but that the night does not necessarily restrict the mobility of women. However, mobility is limited to stopping-off places, while women tend to avoid open spaces. On the contrary, during the day, the women whose mobility is restricted are usually older, less educated, and more deprived. The paper will reconstruct the experience in the fieldwork in two deprived neighborhoods of Milan and will try to focus on limits, boundaries and challenges of this issue, following a gender perspective’s analysis.
Verdolini, V. (2021). Dangerous gender: the limits in the field of security and safety. Intervento presentato a: ERQ 2021 | Session 22 | Gendering Ethnography, Online.
Dangerous gender: the limits in the field of security and safety
Verdolini, V.
2021
Abstract
The paper would like to examine the limits of reflexivity -in a gendered perspective- in the field of security and safety research. Starting from two different fieldwork (prison ethnography and 6 month of ethnography in the project Horizon2020 Margin) the work tries to examine the limits and the challenge of the position of the researcher. Aware that the perception of insecurity, especially linked to gender, is affected by subjective variables linked to the experience, interpretative schemes and practices implemented by individual scholars, the theme of gender connected to security (and safety of the researcher) emerged in the field transversely, and this variable is essential for reasoning about methods and practices. The paper will examine how a double exposure to gender variables changes the perception of the field and influences data collection. On the one hand, in fact, in the literature it is now assumed that the gender issue modifies the relationship with the field, and the aspects of danger / risk / are often implemented. On the other hand, safety studies report that the real and perceived risk of insecurity varies according to gender for multifactorial reasons. The coexistence of the two variables therefore requires a deepening and further reflection. With respect to the first aspect, as Warren & Hackney argue, "In the 1980s, we saw a few confessional tales of sexual interest and attraction (Turnbull, 1986); at the turn of the millennium, a darker side of sexuality appeared in ethnography. Themes of bodily and sexual danger inform turn-of-the-century narratives of gendered ethnography, the bodily danger of violence a concern of both females and males, but the specifically sexual dangers of assault or harassment more salient to women in the field. ". According to the authors, it is possible to register a greater exposure to forms of violence characterizing the access of researchers to the field and their research / observation activity. Adler & Adler (1987) affirm that gender in fieldwork represents a variable in the continuum between the role of foreigners and that of a member of the context that is observed. With respect to gender as the "subject" and "object" of observation, it is useful here to recall the pioneering work of Tamar Pitch and Carmine Ventimiglia "What kind of security. Women and men in the city ", which in 2001 analyzed the so-called "City of women" both as needs and as a relationship between space and fears, identifying on the one hand an identification in the victim process and on the other the constant difficulty of getting out of the dimension of the unsolvable patérnage and criticism of the idea of the "weak" gender. As theoretical paradigms which then have a response in practices and perceptions. Even during the research fieldwork, these types of paradigms found a confirmation in the practices. To put it with Bourdieu and his "Male Domain", the genre performs a habitus that is both in the practices of the observed and in the eyes of the observers, or even more of the observers and is produced and reproduced in even very different contexts . Not only that: according to Bourgois (2001], and Nancy Scheper-Huges (with Bourgois, 2004) violence operates along a continuum that includes structural, symbolic, daily and intimate dimensions. These theoretical approaches find a correspondence in the reflections of the researcher in the field. A young single woman who spends long periods of time in these spaces presents an anomaly and is subjected to unwanted and unpleasant male advances. This reflection brings up the issue of "avoided spaces" for women. Still referring to Scheper-Huges, gender-based violence could fall within those forms of daily violence, therefore transversal and capable of producing social indifference towards brutality (1992; 1996). The lack of people occupying public outdoor spaces, especially in marginalized contexts, imposed everyday negotiation with the issue of security in the field, a dna strong visibility of the researcher, especially in public spaces. Important in this sense are the two works on gender and insecurity (Condon, Lieber, Maillochon, 2005; Lieber, 2008) which present the results of in-depth interviews of women in different neighborhoods of Paris. The objective is to deconstruct the topic, in order to highlight the social construction of insecurity in a gender-based public space, which is dominated by masculinity. The authors suggest that insecurity is crystallized during the night, but that the night does not necessarily restrict the mobility of women. However, mobility is limited to stopping-off places, while women tend to avoid open spaces. On the contrary, during the day, the women whose mobility is restricted are usually older, less educated, and more deprived. The paper will reconstruct the experience in the fieldwork in two deprived neighborhoods of Milan and will try to focus on limits, boundaries and challenges of this issue, following a gender perspective’s analysis.
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