Rarely do researchers publicly divulge their experiences of failure and rejection during fieldwor... more Rarely do researchers publicly divulge their experiences of failure and rejection during fieldwork. Negotiations for access with members of new religious movements (NRMs) can be particularly fraught, especially for new researchers, who are embarking on a rite of passage with their first fieldwork experience. This article offers the author's experience of participant refusal during her doctoral research on a NRM in Australia in 2009, focused on the group's home birth practices. It provides an analysis of the methodological literature on access, rapport and the importance of a reflexive approach to one's positionality, and addresses the lack of scholarship on fieldwork rejection and failure. By engaging with the experience of rejection, this article argues that rather than a mere lack of rapport, it was the complex social and political context of the group, compounded by the politically charged topic of home birth, that generated the decline to participate. Using this experience as an example, this article argues that rather than embarrassment and shame, rejection and failure form part of the "non-data" of research practice, offering methodological and epistemological insights that come from a critical engagement with such experiences.
The discursive construction of the human placenta varies greatly between hospital and home-birthi... more The discursive construction of the human placenta varies greatly between hospital and home-birthing contexts.
The former, driven by medicolegal discourse, defines the placenta as clinical waste. Within this framework,
the placenta is as much of an afterthought as it is considered the “afterbirth.” In home-birth practices,
the placenta is constructed as a “special” and meaningful element of the childbirth experience. I demonstrate
this using 51 in-depth interviews with women who were pregnant and planning home births in Australia
or had recently had home births in Australia. Analysis of these interviews indicates that the discursive shift
taking place in home-birth practices from the medicalized model translates into a richer understanding and
appreciation of the placenta as a spiritual component of the childbirth experience. The practices discussed
in this article include the burial of the placenta beneath a specifically chosen plant, consuming the placenta,
and having a lotus birth, which refers to not cutting the umbilical cord after the birth of the child but allowing
it to dry naturally and break of its own accord. By shifting focus away from the medicalized frames of reference
in relation to the third stage of labor, the home-birthing women in this study have used the placenta
in various rituals and ceremonies to spiritualize an aspect of birth that is usually overlooked.
There is an increasing interest in the role of spirituality on the experience of health, wellness... more There is an increasing interest in the role of spirituality on the experience of health, wellness and illness, as well as the role of spiritual practice in health care provision. For pregnancy and childbirth, this focus has tended to concentrate on hospital birth settings and care, and religious forms of spirituality. The blessingway ceremony can be described as an alternative baby shower, popular with home-birthing women. Its focus is woman centred and draws on the power of ritual to evoke a spiritual experience for the pregnant host and her guests. This spirituality is experienced as a strong connection between women, their relationship with ‘nature’, and forged via the nostalgic imagination of women through time and space. This article will draw on data obtained in 2010 during doctoral
fieldwork with 52 home-birthing women across eastern Australia and will examine the blessingway ceremony and its significance as a site of potential spiritual empowerment for
pregnant and birthing women.
The “home versus hospital” as places of birth debate has had a long and at times vicious history.... more The “home versus hospital” as places of birth debate has had a long and at times vicious history. From academic literature to media coverage, the two have often been pitted against each other not only as opposing physical spaces, but al-so as opposing ideologies of birth. The hospital has been heavily critiqued as a site of childbirth since the 1960s, with particular focus on childbirth and medicalisation. The focus of much of the hospital and home birthing research exists on a continuum of medicalisation, safety, risk, agency, and maternal and neonatal health and wellbeing. While the hos-pital birthing space has been interrogated, a critique of home birthing space has remained largely absent from the so-cial sciences. The research presented in this article unpacks the complex relationship between home birthing women and the spaces in which they birth. Using qualitative data collected with 59 home birthing women in Australia in 2010, between childbearing and the home should not be considered as merely an alternative to hospital births, but rather as an experience that completely renegotiates the home space. Home, for the participants in this study, is a dynamic, changing, and even spiritual element in the childbirth experience, and not simply the building in which it occurs.
In order to achieve professional status anthropologists must conduct long-term fieldwork in a par... more In order to achieve professional status anthropologists must conduct long-term fieldwork in a particular geographical and cultural setting. This means that the process of ‘entering the field’ can be fraught with anxiety because of the possibility that they might be denied access. There is considerable scholarly literature on the intricacies of entering the field with tips, hints and tricks to guide researchers, as well as discussion of the theoretical dilemmas, political considerations, dangers and potential ethical impositions during fieldwork (for instance, Kovats-Bernat 2002; Hume and Mulcock 2014; Pollard 2009). Anthropologists have looked critically at the colonial geography of their fieldwork sites (Gupta and Ferguson 1997), and have asserted their right to study at home, ‘study-up’ (Clifford 1997), and conduct research in multiple sites (Marcus 1998) and in cyberspace (Burell 2009). They have questioned the centrality of humans (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010) and debunked the “fable of rapport,” the process in which classic ethnographies “narrate the attainment of full participant observation status” (Clifford 1988: 40) and, as a consequence, assert authoritative knowledge over the culture the anthropologist is studying. Yet we have not paid attention to situations in which, after long negotiations with gatekeepers, access is denied. One of the implications of this oversight is that the construction of knowledge that occurs during fieldwork is thought only to begin once access is ‘gained.’ However, we contend that situations in which researchers cannot enter and/or remain in the field are ‘good to think with.’ For instance, is it the case that discussing experiences of fieldsite denial is a source of shame and a taboo in anthropology because one becomes an anthropologist only after successfully conducting fieldwork? In a world in which research funding is tightening and there is a culture of accountability in academia, how should researchers and anthropology departments deal with such situations? How can they support PhD students who have not gained access to field sites?
Call for abstracts for edited volume: “Access Denied: When Anthropologists Cannot Enter the Field... more Call for abstracts for edited volume: “Access Denied: When Anthropologists Cannot Enter the Field”
Editors: Dr Emily Burns, Western Sydney University, Australia Associate Prof Cristina Rocha, Western Sydney University, Australia
In order to achieve professional status anthropologists must conduct long-term fieldwork in a particular geographical and cultural setting. This means that the process of ‘entering the field’ can be fraught with anxiety because of the possibility that they might be denied access. There is considerable scholarly literature on the intricacies of entering the field with tips, hints and tricks to guide researchers, as well as discussion of the theoretical dilemmas, political considerations, dangers and potential ethical impositions during fieldwork (for instance, Kovats-Bernat 2002; Hume and Mulcock 2014; Pollard 2009). Anthropologists have looked critically at the colonial geography of their fieldwork sites (Gupta and Ferguson 1997), and have asserted their right to study at home, ‘study-up’ (Clifford 1997), and conduct research in multiple sites (Marcus 1998) and in cyberspace (Burell 2009). They have questioned the centrality of humans (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010) and debunked the “fable of rapport” (Clifford 1988).
Yet we have not paid attention to situations in which, after long negotiations with gatekeepers, access is denied. One of the implications of this oversight is that the construction of knowledge that occurs during fieldwork is thought only to begin once access is ‘gained.’ However, we contend that situations in which researchers cannot enter and/or remain in the field are ‘good to think with.’ For instance, is it the case that discussing experiences of field-site denial is a source of shame and a taboo in anthropology because one becomes an anthropologist only after successfully conducting fieldwork? In a world in which research funding is tightening and there is a culture of accountability in academia, how should researchers and anthropology departments deal with such situations? How can they support PhD students who have not gained access to field sites?
The editors welcome contributions that consider (but are not limited to) the following: - Case studies of and the fallout from access denial; - The impact that rejection from a field site has on researchers; - Reflections on the implications of access denial on doctoral students, their supervisors, anthropology departments and funding agencies; - The ways in which researchers and participants experience denial of access; - Explorations of how anthropologists have redirected their research after such experiences; - Fieldwork with non-traditional access/consent negotiations such as online ethnography; - The ‘up-side’ of access denial: How might field-site denial and/or rejection be reconfigured as valuable/usable data?
Submissions The editors invite abstracts that consider the above themes. Abstracts should be between 300-500 words, with final chapters not exceeding 8000 words (including bibliographic material). The deadline for abstracts: 31 March, 2017.
References: Burrell, Jenna (2009) The field site as a network: A strategy for locating ethnographic research. Field Methods 21(2): 181-199. Clifford, James (1997) Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. _______. (1988) Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson (eds) (1997) Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hume, Lynne and Jane Mulcock (2014) Anthropologists in the Field: Cases in Participant Observation. NY: Columbia University Press. Kirksey, Eben and Stephan Helmreich (2010) The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography. Cultural anthropology, 25 (4): 545-576. Kovats-Bernat, Christopher J. (2002) Negotiating Dangerous Fields: Pragmatic Strategies for Fieldwork amid Violence and Terror. American Anthropologist 104 (1): 208-222. Marcus, George (1998) Ethnography in/of the world system: The emergence of multi-sited ethnography. In Ethnography through Thick and Thin, ed. G. Marcus, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Pollard, Amy (2009) Field of screams: difficulty and ethnographic fieldwork. Anthropology Matters 11 (2). Available at: http://www.anthropologymatters.com/index.php/anth_matters/article/view/10/10
Rarely do researchers publicly divulge their experiences of failure and rejection during fieldwor... more Rarely do researchers publicly divulge their experiences of failure and rejection during fieldwork. Negotiations for access with members of new religious movements (NRMs) can be particularly fraught, especially for new researchers, who are embarking on a rite of passage with their first fieldwork experience. This article offers the author's experience of participant refusal during her doctoral research on a NRM in Australia in 2009, focused on the group's home birth practices. It provides an analysis of the methodological literature on access, rapport and the importance of a reflexive approach to one's positionality, and addresses the lack of scholarship on fieldwork rejection and failure. By engaging with the experience of rejection, this article argues that rather than a mere lack of rapport, it was the complex social and political context of the group, compounded by the politically charged topic of home birth, that generated the decline to participate. Using this experience as an example, this article argues that rather than embarrassment and shame, rejection and failure form part of the "non-data" of research practice, offering methodological and epistemological insights that come from a critical engagement with such experiences.
The discursive construction of the human placenta varies greatly between hospital and home-birthi... more The discursive construction of the human placenta varies greatly between hospital and home-birthing contexts.
The former, driven by medicolegal discourse, defines the placenta as clinical waste. Within this framework,
the placenta is as much of an afterthought as it is considered the “afterbirth.” In home-birth practices,
the placenta is constructed as a “special” and meaningful element of the childbirth experience. I demonstrate
this using 51 in-depth interviews with women who were pregnant and planning home births in Australia
or had recently had home births in Australia. Analysis of these interviews indicates that the discursive shift
taking place in home-birth practices from the medicalized model translates into a richer understanding and
appreciation of the placenta as a spiritual component of the childbirth experience. The practices discussed
in this article include the burial of the placenta beneath a specifically chosen plant, consuming the placenta,
and having a lotus birth, which refers to not cutting the umbilical cord after the birth of the child but allowing
it to dry naturally and break of its own accord. By shifting focus away from the medicalized frames of reference
in relation to the third stage of labor, the home-birthing women in this study have used the placenta
in various rituals and ceremonies to spiritualize an aspect of birth that is usually overlooked.
There is an increasing interest in the role of spirituality on the experience of health, wellness... more There is an increasing interest in the role of spirituality on the experience of health, wellness and illness, as well as the role of spiritual practice in health care provision. For pregnancy and childbirth, this focus has tended to concentrate on hospital birth settings and care, and religious forms of spirituality. The blessingway ceremony can be described as an alternative baby shower, popular with home-birthing women. Its focus is woman centred and draws on the power of ritual to evoke a spiritual experience for the pregnant host and her guests. This spirituality is experienced as a strong connection between women, their relationship with ‘nature’, and forged via the nostalgic imagination of women through time and space. This article will draw on data obtained in 2010 during doctoral
fieldwork with 52 home-birthing women across eastern Australia and will examine the blessingway ceremony and its significance as a site of potential spiritual empowerment for
pregnant and birthing women.
The “home versus hospital” as places of birth debate has had a long and at times vicious history.... more The “home versus hospital” as places of birth debate has had a long and at times vicious history. From academic literature to media coverage, the two have often been pitted against each other not only as opposing physical spaces, but al-so as opposing ideologies of birth. The hospital has been heavily critiqued as a site of childbirth since the 1960s, with particular focus on childbirth and medicalisation. The focus of much of the hospital and home birthing research exists on a continuum of medicalisation, safety, risk, agency, and maternal and neonatal health and wellbeing. While the hos-pital birthing space has been interrogated, a critique of home birthing space has remained largely absent from the so-cial sciences. The research presented in this article unpacks the complex relationship between home birthing women and the spaces in which they birth. Using qualitative data collected with 59 home birthing women in Australia in 2010, between childbearing and the home should not be considered as merely an alternative to hospital births, but rather as an experience that completely renegotiates the home space. Home, for the participants in this study, is a dynamic, changing, and even spiritual element in the childbirth experience, and not simply the building in which it occurs.
In order to achieve professional status anthropologists must conduct long-term fieldwork in a par... more In order to achieve professional status anthropologists must conduct long-term fieldwork in a particular geographical and cultural setting. This means that the process of ‘entering the field’ can be fraught with anxiety because of the possibility that they might be denied access. There is considerable scholarly literature on the intricacies of entering the field with tips, hints and tricks to guide researchers, as well as discussion of the theoretical dilemmas, political considerations, dangers and potential ethical impositions during fieldwork (for instance, Kovats-Bernat 2002; Hume and Mulcock 2014; Pollard 2009). Anthropologists have looked critically at the colonial geography of their fieldwork sites (Gupta and Ferguson 1997), and have asserted their right to study at home, ‘study-up’ (Clifford 1997), and conduct research in multiple sites (Marcus 1998) and in cyberspace (Burell 2009). They have questioned the centrality of humans (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010) and debunked the “fable of rapport,” the process in which classic ethnographies “narrate the attainment of full participant observation status” (Clifford 1988: 40) and, as a consequence, assert authoritative knowledge over the culture the anthropologist is studying. Yet we have not paid attention to situations in which, after long negotiations with gatekeepers, access is denied. One of the implications of this oversight is that the construction of knowledge that occurs during fieldwork is thought only to begin once access is ‘gained.’ However, we contend that situations in which researchers cannot enter and/or remain in the field are ‘good to think with.’ For instance, is it the case that discussing experiences of fieldsite denial is a source of shame and a taboo in anthropology because one becomes an anthropologist only after successfully conducting fieldwork? In a world in which research funding is tightening and there is a culture of accountability in academia, how should researchers and anthropology departments deal with such situations? How can they support PhD students who have not gained access to field sites?
Call for abstracts for edited volume: “Access Denied: When Anthropologists Cannot Enter the Field... more Call for abstracts for edited volume: “Access Denied: When Anthropologists Cannot Enter the Field”
Editors: Dr Emily Burns, Western Sydney University, Australia Associate Prof Cristina Rocha, Western Sydney University, Australia
In order to achieve professional status anthropologists must conduct long-term fieldwork in a particular geographical and cultural setting. This means that the process of ‘entering the field’ can be fraught with anxiety because of the possibility that they might be denied access. There is considerable scholarly literature on the intricacies of entering the field with tips, hints and tricks to guide researchers, as well as discussion of the theoretical dilemmas, political considerations, dangers and potential ethical impositions during fieldwork (for instance, Kovats-Bernat 2002; Hume and Mulcock 2014; Pollard 2009). Anthropologists have looked critically at the colonial geography of their fieldwork sites (Gupta and Ferguson 1997), and have asserted their right to study at home, ‘study-up’ (Clifford 1997), and conduct research in multiple sites (Marcus 1998) and in cyberspace (Burell 2009). They have questioned the centrality of humans (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010) and debunked the “fable of rapport” (Clifford 1988).
Yet we have not paid attention to situations in which, after long negotiations with gatekeepers, access is denied. One of the implications of this oversight is that the construction of knowledge that occurs during fieldwork is thought only to begin once access is ‘gained.’ However, we contend that situations in which researchers cannot enter and/or remain in the field are ‘good to think with.’ For instance, is it the case that discussing experiences of field-site denial is a source of shame and a taboo in anthropology because one becomes an anthropologist only after successfully conducting fieldwork? In a world in which research funding is tightening and there is a culture of accountability in academia, how should researchers and anthropology departments deal with such situations? How can they support PhD students who have not gained access to field sites?
The editors welcome contributions that consider (but are not limited to) the following: - Case studies of and the fallout from access denial; - The impact that rejection from a field site has on researchers; - Reflections on the implications of access denial on doctoral students, their supervisors, anthropology departments and funding agencies; - The ways in which researchers and participants experience denial of access; - Explorations of how anthropologists have redirected their research after such experiences; - Fieldwork with non-traditional access/consent negotiations such as online ethnography; - The ‘up-side’ of access denial: How might field-site denial and/or rejection be reconfigured as valuable/usable data?
Submissions The editors invite abstracts that consider the above themes. Abstracts should be between 300-500 words, with final chapters not exceeding 8000 words (including bibliographic material). The deadline for abstracts: 31 March, 2017.
References: Burrell, Jenna (2009) The field site as a network: A strategy for locating ethnographic research. Field Methods 21(2): 181-199. Clifford, James (1997) Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. _______. (1988) Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson (eds) (1997) Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hume, Lynne and Jane Mulcock (2014) Anthropologists in the Field: Cases in Participant Observation. NY: Columbia University Press. Kirksey, Eben and Stephan Helmreich (2010) The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography. Cultural anthropology, 25 (4): 545-576. Kovats-Bernat, Christopher J. (2002) Negotiating Dangerous Fields: Pragmatic Strategies for Fieldwork amid Violence and Terror. American Anthropologist 104 (1): 208-222. Marcus, George (1998) Ethnography in/of the world system: The emergence of multi-sited ethnography. In Ethnography through Thick and Thin, ed. G. Marcus, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Pollard, Amy (2009) Field of screams: difficulty and ethnographic fieldwork. Anthropology Matters 11 (2). Available at: http://www.anthropologymatters.com/index.php/anth_matters/article/view/10/10
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Papers by Emily Burns
The former, driven by medicolegal discourse, defines the placenta as clinical waste. Within this framework,
the placenta is as much of an afterthought as it is considered the “afterbirth.” In home-birth practices,
the placenta is constructed as a “special” and meaningful element of the childbirth experience. I demonstrate
this using 51 in-depth interviews with women who were pregnant and planning home births in Australia
or had recently had home births in Australia. Analysis of these interviews indicates that the discursive shift
taking place in home-birth practices from the medicalized model translates into a richer understanding and
appreciation of the placenta as a spiritual component of the childbirth experience. The practices discussed
in this article include the burial of the placenta beneath a specifically chosen plant, consuming the placenta,
and having a lotus birth, which refers to not cutting the umbilical cord after the birth of the child but allowing
it to dry naturally and break of its own accord. By shifting focus away from the medicalized frames of reference
in relation to the third stage of labor, the home-birthing women in this study have used the placenta
in various rituals and ceremonies to spiritualize an aspect of birth that is usually overlooked.
fieldwork with 52 home-birthing women across eastern Australia and will examine the blessingway ceremony and its significance as a site of potential spiritual empowerment for
pregnant and birthing women.
Books by Emily Burns
have asserted their right to study at home, ‘study-up’ (Clifford 1997), and conduct research in multiple sites (Marcus 1998) and in cyberspace (Burell 2009). They have questioned the centrality of humans (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010) and debunked the “fable of rapport,” the process in which classic ethnographies “narrate the attainment of full participant observation status” (Clifford 1988: 40) and, as a consequence, assert authoritative knowledge over the culture the anthropologist is studying.
Yet we have not paid attention to situations in which, after long negotiations with gatekeepers, access is denied. One of the implications of this oversight is that the construction of knowledge that occurs during fieldwork is thought only to begin once access is ‘gained.’ However, we contend that situations in which researchers cannot enter and/or remain in the field are ‘good to think with.’ For instance, is it the case that discussing experiences of fieldsite denial is a source of shame and a taboo in anthropology because one becomes an anthropologist only after successfully conducting fieldwork? In a world in which research
funding is tightening and there is a culture of accountability in academia, how should researchers and anthropology departments deal with such situations? How can they support PhD students who have not gained access to field sites?
Editors: Dr Emily Burns, Western Sydney University, Australia
Associate Prof Cristina Rocha, Western Sydney University, Australia
In order to achieve professional status anthropologists must conduct long-term fieldwork in a particular geographical and cultural setting. This means that the process of ‘entering the field’ can be fraught with anxiety because of the possibility that they might be denied access. There is considerable scholarly literature on the intricacies of entering the field with tips, hints and tricks to guide researchers, as well as discussion of the theoretical dilemmas, political considerations, dangers and potential ethical impositions during fieldwork (for instance, Kovats-Bernat 2002; Hume and Mulcock 2014; Pollard 2009). Anthropologists have looked critically at the colonial geography of their fieldwork sites (Gupta and Ferguson 1997), and have asserted their right to study at home, ‘study-up’ (Clifford 1997), and conduct research in multiple sites (Marcus 1998) and in cyberspace (Burell 2009). They have questioned the centrality of humans (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010) and debunked the “fable of rapport” (Clifford 1988).
Yet we have not paid attention to situations in which, after long negotiations with gatekeepers, access is denied. One of the implications of this oversight is that the construction of knowledge that occurs during fieldwork is thought only to begin once access is ‘gained.’ However, we contend that situations in which researchers cannot enter and/or remain in the field are ‘good to think with.’ For instance, is it the case that discussing experiences of field-site denial is a source of shame and a taboo in anthropology because one becomes an anthropologist only after successfully conducting fieldwork? In a world in which research funding is tightening and there is a culture of accountability in academia, how should researchers and anthropology departments deal with such situations? How can they support PhD students who have not gained access to field sites?
The editors welcome contributions that consider (but are not limited to) the following:
- Case studies of and the fallout from access denial;
- The impact that rejection from a field site has on researchers;
- Reflections on the implications of access denial on doctoral students, their supervisors, anthropology departments and funding agencies;
- The ways in which researchers and participants experience denial of access;
- Explorations of how anthropologists have redirected their research after such experiences;
- Fieldwork with non-traditional access/consent negotiations such as online ethnography;
- The ‘up-side’ of access denial: How might field-site denial and/or rejection be reconfigured as valuable/usable data?
Submissions
The editors invite abstracts that consider the above themes. Abstracts should be between 300-500 words, with final chapters not exceeding 8000 words (including bibliographic material).
The deadline for abstracts: 31 March, 2017.
Abstracts and queries should be submitted to Dr Emily Burns Emily.burns@westernsydney.edu.au
References:
Burrell, Jenna (2009) The field site as a network: A strategy for locating ethnographic research. Field Methods 21(2): 181-199.
Clifford, James (1997) Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
_______. (1988) Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson (eds) (1997) Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hume, Lynne and Jane Mulcock (2014) Anthropologists in the Field: Cases in Participant Observation. NY: Columbia University Press.
Kirksey, Eben and Stephan Helmreich (2010) The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography. Cultural anthropology, 25 (4): 545-576.
Kovats-Bernat, Christopher J. (2002) Negotiating Dangerous Fields: Pragmatic Strategies for Fieldwork amid Violence and Terror. American Anthropologist 104 (1): 208-222.
Marcus, George (1998) Ethnography in/of the world system: The emergence of multi-sited ethnography. In Ethnography through Thick and Thin, ed. G. Marcus, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Pollard, Amy (2009) Field of screams: difficulty and ethnographic fieldwork. Anthropology Matters 11 (2). Available at: http://www.anthropologymatters.com/index.php/anth_matters/article/view/10/10
The former, driven by medicolegal discourse, defines the placenta as clinical waste. Within this framework,
the placenta is as much of an afterthought as it is considered the “afterbirth.” In home-birth practices,
the placenta is constructed as a “special” and meaningful element of the childbirth experience. I demonstrate
this using 51 in-depth interviews with women who were pregnant and planning home births in Australia
or had recently had home births in Australia. Analysis of these interviews indicates that the discursive shift
taking place in home-birth practices from the medicalized model translates into a richer understanding and
appreciation of the placenta as a spiritual component of the childbirth experience. The practices discussed
in this article include the burial of the placenta beneath a specifically chosen plant, consuming the placenta,
and having a lotus birth, which refers to not cutting the umbilical cord after the birth of the child but allowing
it to dry naturally and break of its own accord. By shifting focus away from the medicalized frames of reference
in relation to the third stage of labor, the home-birthing women in this study have used the placenta
in various rituals and ceremonies to spiritualize an aspect of birth that is usually overlooked.
fieldwork with 52 home-birthing women across eastern Australia and will examine the blessingway ceremony and its significance as a site of potential spiritual empowerment for
pregnant and birthing women.
have asserted their right to study at home, ‘study-up’ (Clifford 1997), and conduct research in multiple sites (Marcus 1998) and in cyberspace (Burell 2009). They have questioned the centrality of humans (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010) and debunked the “fable of rapport,” the process in which classic ethnographies “narrate the attainment of full participant observation status” (Clifford 1988: 40) and, as a consequence, assert authoritative knowledge over the culture the anthropologist is studying.
Yet we have not paid attention to situations in which, after long negotiations with gatekeepers, access is denied. One of the implications of this oversight is that the construction of knowledge that occurs during fieldwork is thought only to begin once access is ‘gained.’ However, we contend that situations in which researchers cannot enter and/or remain in the field are ‘good to think with.’ For instance, is it the case that discussing experiences of fieldsite denial is a source of shame and a taboo in anthropology because one becomes an anthropologist only after successfully conducting fieldwork? In a world in which research
funding is tightening and there is a culture of accountability in academia, how should researchers and anthropology departments deal with such situations? How can they support PhD students who have not gained access to field sites?
Editors: Dr Emily Burns, Western Sydney University, Australia
Associate Prof Cristina Rocha, Western Sydney University, Australia
In order to achieve professional status anthropologists must conduct long-term fieldwork in a particular geographical and cultural setting. This means that the process of ‘entering the field’ can be fraught with anxiety because of the possibility that they might be denied access. There is considerable scholarly literature on the intricacies of entering the field with tips, hints and tricks to guide researchers, as well as discussion of the theoretical dilemmas, political considerations, dangers and potential ethical impositions during fieldwork (for instance, Kovats-Bernat 2002; Hume and Mulcock 2014; Pollard 2009). Anthropologists have looked critically at the colonial geography of their fieldwork sites (Gupta and Ferguson 1997), and have asserted their right to study at home, ‘study-up’ (Clifford 1997), and conduct research in multiple sites (Marcus 1998) and in cyberspace (Burell 2009). They have questioned the centrality of humans (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010) and debunked the “fable of rapport” (Clifford 1988).
Yet we have not paid attention to situations in which, after long negotiations with gatekeepers, access is denied. One of the implications of this oversight is that the construction of knowledge that occurs during fieldwork is thought only to begin once access is ‘gained.’ However, we contend that situations in which researchers cannot enter and/or remain in the field are ‘good to think with.’ For instance, is it the case that discussing experiences of field-site denial is a source of shame and a taboo in anthropology because one becomes an anthropologist only after successfully conducting fieldwork? In a world in which research funding is tightening and there is a culture of accountability in academia, how should researchers and anthropology departments deal with such situations? How can they support PhD students who have not gained access to field sites?
The editors welcome contributions that consider (but are not limited to) the following:
- Case studies of and the fallout from access denial;
- The impact that rejection from a field site has on researchers;
- Reflections on the implications of access denial on doctoral students, their supervisors, anthropology departments and funding agencies;
- The ways in which researchers and participants experience denial of access;
- Explorations of how anthropologists have redirected their research after such experiences;
- Fieldwork with non-traditional access/consent negotiations such as online ethnography;
- The ‘up-side’ of access denial: How might field-site denial and/or rejection be reconfigured as valuable/usable data?
Submissions
The editors invite abstracts that consider the above themes. Abstracts should be between 300-500 words, with final chapters not exceeding 8000 words (including bibliographic material).
The deadline for abstracts: 31 March, 2017.
Abstracts and queries should be submitted to Dr Emily Burns Emily.burns@westernsydney.edu.au
References:
Burrell, Jenna (2009) The field site as a network: A strategy for locating ethnographic research. Field Methods 21(2): 181-199.
Clifford, James (1997) Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
_______. (1988) Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson (eds) (1997) Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hume, Lynne and Jane Mulcock (2014) Anthropologists in the Field: Cases in Participant Observation. NY: Columbia University Press.
Kirksey, Eben and Stephan Helmreich (2010) The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography. Cultural anthropology, 25 (4): 545-576.
Kovats-Bernat, Christopher J. (2002) Negotiating Dangerous Fields: Pragmatic Strategies for Fieldwork amid Violence and Terror. American Anthropologist 104 (1): 208-222.
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