A male ethnographer’s perspective on sexual harassment in fieldwork: a research note

Introduction

Sexual harassment is not unknown among female ethnographers (e.g. Congdon, 2015; Johansson, 2015; Kloß, 2017; Mügge, 2013). Nevertheless, as Hanson and Richards (2019: 4) have said, ‘there is relatively little discussion in the profession outside of feminist circles’, and the issue is addressed in the context of gender dynamics (e.g. Sharp and Kremer, 2006). The incidence of male ethnographers who face sexual harassment is shrouded in even more silence. In this article I want to share my own experience during my ethnographic fieldwork. I maintain that although as a man I had many privileges in my field site compared to my female counterparts (including the unlikelihood of being harassed), my gender was relevant to my response to the sexual harassment I experienced. To elucidate my argument, I will briefly present my fieldwork experience before describing the harassment I encountered.

In my doctoral thesis (2010) I focused on Jewish revival in Israel, my home country. The dilemmas and challenges I encountered during fieldwork were in line with what is encountered by anthropologists doing what is known as ‘anthropology at home’ (Alcalde, 2007; Mughal, 2015; Peirano, 1998). After completing my doctorate I wanted to research religious life in a different country, so I chose India as my destination, and in 2013 I undertook an ethnographic study in the Western Himalayas, a study in which I am intermittently engaged to this day. My field of research is located on the border of two states in India—Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. The research focuses on the religious experience and changing theological perceptions relating to local gods (devtās). My specific focus is a deity named Mahāsū, who has many temples devoted to him covering a vast area. In my first journey to the region I was accompanied by a young Israeli woman who was working on a master’s degree in Indian studies, and her twin sister (who one year later became my wife), who served as a research assistant. When I returned in 2014 it was with a research assistant, another young Israeli woman. Since then I have done my fieldwork alone.

During this time I camped in the village of Pujarli, ¹ and from here I traveled a great deal to many villages throughout the region that is perceived by the locals as the territory of Mahāsū. It is a rural area that is rarely visited by tourists or foreigners. Usually when I came to a village for the first time, I would arrive with locals who knew me and could vouch for me. This usually helped me to quickly overcome their suspicions and successfully build rapport. It was rare for me to not be accepted warmly and cordially by the villagers, so I felt safe almost all the time I spent in the field. During all of my research in the territory of Mahāsū, the fact that I am a man was positively significant. It allowed me to approach the villagers with confidence. I was fully aware of this privilege, knowing that a female anthropologist in my position would face difficulties that I did not face. In general, as an ethnographer I did experience some of the difficulties Pollard (2009) mentions, such as loneliness, depression, disappointment, frustration, and fear, but the reality of sexual harassment did not cross my mind. ²

The incident

One of my main informants in the fieldwork was Parveen, a young schoolteacher. When I was engaged in fieldwork in 2015, he told me that perhaps it would be useful for me to talk with the new principal of his school. The principal was originally from a nearby region and therefore he was not a devotee of Mahāsū. Nevertheless, I was told that he knew a vast amount about religious life in my field of research. Since he was an educated person not only could he tell me about the local devī-devtā (gods and goddesses), but perhaps he could also provide an outsider’s perspective.

After Parveen fixed the meeting, a taxi driver took me to meet the school principal in his office, a half-hour’s drive from my home base. The first hour of the interview went as expected. When the meeting was almost ended the school principal started asking me about the challenges of education in Israel. He wanted to know about the main problems in schools in Israel. Having almost never thought about it, I made some remarks about violence and screen culture. He then asked whether there were any sexual problems. Puzzled, I said no, and he then told me that in India it is a problem. I did not know what to say as he went on talking about the problem of Indians not being open with sex. I smiled with embarrassment. By then warning bells were sounding in my head so I tried to divert the conversation, but to no avail. I informed him that I am in a hurry because a taxi driver is waiting for me. He asked for my phone number which I unwillingly gave him. Then he said it would be nice if we could get together for a picnic on Sunday, saying that ‘if something will happen between us it could be fine’. Again, I smiled with embarrassment, saying that I really needed to go. While approaching the door he continued talking about sex in general and specifically about our potential relationship. I told him that I would be in touch and left his office.

From the taxi I made some phone calls to Israel—first to my wife and then to two of my friends to tell them about the incident with the principal. I needed to talk this over. It was very important for me to share the experience with the people I am closest to. I was shocked and amused, but at that moment I had no sense of danger. I think that perhaps if I were a woman I would have felt differently, more intimidated (e.g. Kloß, 2017). That mood changed a few hours later, when the principal started texting me with questions such as ‘Where you are you staying?’, ‘What did you feel about our meeting?’, and ‘When can we meet again?’ Initially I responded to him politely. Seeing that he was Parveen’s boss I thought that ignoring him could harm Parveen. But when he insisted in his texts that we should meet again, I stopped texting him back, hoping that I wasn’t jeopardizing Parveen’s job. A few days after our meeting, the school principal stopped texting and I never heard from him again.

For the next few days not only was I concerned for Parveen’s job but also for my own safety. I started to fear that something bad might happen to me. The fact that this incident happened in rural India exacerbated my anxiety. Talking about sex, especially in this context (discussing religious life), is totally unacceptable in the local culture, and because it was entirely unrelated to the subject in hand, I feared his subsequent actions. If he allowed himself to behave in this manner there was a distinct possibility that he might turn the whole thing against me. The school principal was highly respected. He had a high-status job as the principal of a prestigious private school, and he was from a high-status caste. What would happen if he complained to the police to gain his revenge because I had not responded to his requests for further (sexual) meetings? What if the police were corrupt and would throw me in jail? I was afraid he might show up in my home base village and would harass me again. Consequently I no longer felt safe in the field. These thoughts and feelings gave me no rest. I wondered whether being a man was detrimental in this situation. If I were a woman, perhaps I would not be afraid of complaints by the principal.

One of my dilemmas was whether I should tell Parveen about the incident and the many texts the principal had sent me. Obviously Parveen and I were supposed to discuss the meeting, so what should I tell him? I was embarrassed to talk about the proposition from the school principal and my fears about the whole situation. Never before (or since) did I talk about sex and sexuality, sexual harassment, or sexual assault with anyone in the field. ³ Eventually I had a brief talk with Parveen. I told him that the school principal had acted strangely during the meeting, and had talked about sex. Parveen agreed that it was indeed rather strange, and I immediately moved on to another subject. I did not tell Parveen that the school principal had asked for a sexual meeting, or about all the subsequent texts he sent. I also did not share my fears with him.

What went through Parveen’s mind at that moment and in the days that followed? I do not know. We have not talked about it since. I, however, felt the need to share it with him, partly because of my anxiety concerning the entire situation. Due to the fears that haunted me, I believed that if I shared the story with Parveen, if only partially, I would have proof in any future trial that it was I who was the victim. Now, thinking about it in retrospect, I think it was somewhat paranoid to fear the school principal. After all, in a conservative society such as rural India the school principal was the one who should be afraid—afraid of being publicly labeled a homosexual. But at that time, I calmed down only when I was safely on the plane, flying home to Israel. I remember passing the law enforcement agencies at the airport in India and breathing a sigh of relief. When I returned to India in 2016, I was told that the school principal had moved to another school, far from my field site.

Self-blame, reaction, and power relations

After being harassed or attacked during fieldwork, female ethnographers often report ‘feelings of self-blame, self-doubt, and shame’ (Hanson and Richards, 2019: 128). These feelings are sometimes intensified by the reactions of colleagues in the academy (e.g. Moreno, 1995). After being sexually assaulted in Rwanda, Andrea Grant thought that ‘a “good anthropologist” would not have gotten herself into such situations in the first place’ (Clark and Grant, 2015: 2). Congdon (2015: 19), who experienced sexual harassment during her fieldwork in Spain, describes the same feeling: ‘I internalised this, concluding that I was a bad researcher for having unwittingly stumbled into the situation, and I became unwilling to put myself out into the field’. Although I did not feel that despair, I experienced feelings of guilt. In the days after meeting the school principal I continually asked myself whether something in my behavior had been the cause of the incident. Was it something I said or did that gave him the opportunity to talk about sex and ask for an intimate meeting? Had I said or done something that gave him the impression that it was acceptable to treat me this way? Some ethnographers suggest that being a researcher is also a position of risk, as some informants want something in return (e.g. Johansson, 2015: 60). I was once asked for a small gift by one important informant, another informant asked me to loan him a substantial sum of money, and a few informants have given me the impression that they feel entitled to receive some attention in return. However, I don’t know whether the school principal was hoping for something in return, and if so, whether sex fell into that category. When I discussed the incident with relatives and friends in Israel, I began thinking that perhaps the school principal had viewed me as a foreigner as well as a researcher, and this gave him the liberty to talk freely about sex, or to make sexual advances (see also, Congdon, 2015: 21–22; Johansson, 2015: 60). ⁴

Another issue that arises is the appropriate response to sexual harassment. Kloß (2017: 402) described her experience as follows: ‘I was unsure how to handle the situation in an ethical and “anthropologically correct” way’. The hesitation about how to react is partly because academic training does not include sufficient guidelines for contending with sexual harassment and assault. Furthermore, there is no one right formula for dealing with it. Congdon (2015) suggests confronting the harasser. Kloß (2017: 405) suggests the same, while elaborating how: ‘An effective confrontation is: 1) to name the behavior as sexual(ized) harassment; 2) to address the inappropriate behavior; and 3) to state the necessary change in the harasser’s behavior’.

Some ethnographers decided not to confront their harasser out of fear that they would lose the informant (Pollard, 2009). With gatekeepers the danger of losing them as a resource while confronting them is even more crucial, as Mügge (2013: 545), who conducted her research in Turkey and Surinam, maintains: ‘Some feminists would argue that one should always stand up and never tolerate being sexualized. While principled, such an approach would have simply made my research impossible’. Mügge (2013: 544) discovered that she ‘could avoid sexual harassment – to a certain extent – by playing the game without outright rejecting gatekeepers’. Johansson (2015:59) reacted similarly during her research in Nigeria ‘by politely smiling, sweetly declining, joking or mildly chastising, not wanting to cause offence’. However, Johansson claims that ‘these awkward dynamics resulted in very real danger’ at least on one occasion. Johansson (2015: 58) claims that the risk she took with such a response was due to her assumptions about ethnography: ‘I felt paralysed by my desire to be a “good anthropologist” – one who actively deconstructs her own authority in an attempt to minimise the power she exerts over social situations’.

Although the school principal was not an important informant, let alone gatekeeper, I did not confront him and chose to avoid it by ‘smiling’ and ‘sweetly declining’ (Johansson, 2015: 58). I did that for two reasons: first, I was afraid of harming Parveen’s job, because the harasser was his boss. Second, I was afraid of incurring harm to myself, by potentially causing the harasser to seek revenge. The last point is crucial to my argument in this article. Regarding safety in the field (including avoiding sexual harassment), there are many downsides to being a woman. Nevertheless, the anxiety I felt after the sexual harassment was gender-related. While I did not feel threatened at the time of the incident, as perhaps a woman might have felt as a result of male–female power relations, the fear was exacerbated after the incident, when I was afraid of being arrested. My fear of retaliation from the person who sexually harassed me, to the point where he would appeal to the authorities, was related to the fact that I am a man. I do not believe a female ethnographer would have feared being reported to the police by her assailant on the grounds that she had made unwanted sexual advances (or on any other grounds). ⁵ This incident taught me, as Perrone (2010) discovered in her fieldwork on drug users, that gender can be both the source of risks and benefits. Nevertheless, in my case this was not simply a case of male–male power relations; it was also connected with local-foreigner identity, social status, my position in the field, the importance of the informant to my fieldwork, and more. Thus the fact that I was sexually harassed in rural India and by a man in a prestigious occupation from a high status caste was relevant to my sense of fear and the position of power he occupied in relation to me. Power relations in the field, therefore, are complex, and we need to consider our identity and our position when assessing the inherent risks in fieldwork.

Conclusion

Writing about sexual harassment during fieldwork, including my own experience, raises several issues. The first is ‘self-blame, and insecurity concerning methodology’ (Kloß, 2017: 403). I believe there are two practical ways to contend with this. Universities should provide in-depth study of the issue as part of their anthropological training. Ethnographers, for their part, should find what Lisiak and Krzyżowski (2018) call ‘spaces of care’. That is, they should obtain emotional support by talking with colleagues about emotionally challenging experiences. In my case I did not, at that time, have any close relationships with other ethnographers of India, and I found my ‘spaces of care’ among family and friends. Some of them had visited India as tourists and were somewhat familiar with the culture.

The issue of the appropriate response is complicated, and I do not presume to have the correct one, especially for female ethnographers. Whatever response one chooses, it should include risk assessment. Hanson and Richards (2019: 2) argue that norms of ‘solitude, danger, and intimacy – which we refer to as “ethnographic fixations” – encourage researchers to endure various forms of violence in the field’. Although I do not think the incident under discussion is due to these ethnographic fixations, I agree with their thesis (see also, Hanson and Richards, 2017). Thus, for example, considerations for the reputation of the researcher in fieldwork should be secondary in light of the risks she or he faces (Johansson, 2015). The ethnographer’s risk assessment during fieldwork must take into account that the native may be in a position of power vis-à-vis the foreigner, and being a male ethnographer (as compared to a female ethnographer) is also a source of risk. Even if the danger is largely imaginary (as it apparently was in my case), it is still real in that it can adversely affect the success of ethnographic work. A deeper study of anthropological training with regard to risk assessment in the field of research, in the context of power relations, can have great benefit for ethnographers in the field.