Paper Title
Practical, Ethical, and Political Difficulties Employing Feminist Research Methods Under “el bloqueo” in Cuba
Location
Room 220, DiGiorgio Campus Center (DiGs)
Keywords
feminist research methods, positionality, power
Start Date
April 2016
End Date
April 2016
Abstract
While conducting research on how “el bloqueo” and the current relations (and changes) in political, social, and economic exchange between the U.S. and Cuba impact the lives of Cuban women and men, I faced practical, ethical, and political challenges to employing feminist research methods given this particular social context. While Smith (2001) argues that starting from the lived experiences of the marginalized is critical to feminist epistemology and research, in practice there are important practical, ethical, and political difficulties in conducting research on women and men of color within contexts of multiple sites of oppression and political risk. This paper reveals preliminary themes of “risk” in telling these stories even when the risk and need of telling the stories is emphasized by respondents themselves through narratives such as: a) Let me show you what they don’t show tourists; b) Let me tell you but we need to keep moving; c) You can’t write here-we don’t know who is watching. The goal of the paper is to highlight questions about how to ethically conduct feminist research methods that attempt to address unequal power relations between the researcher and respondents within multilayered sites of international, national, and local systems of oppression that make exchange part of “el bloqueo” and the stories from marginalized groups high risk.
Practical, Ethical, and Political Difficulties Employing Feminist Research Methods Under “el bloqueo” in Cuba
Room 220, DiGiorgio Campus Center (DiGs)
While conducting research on how “el bloqueo” and the current relations (and changes) in political, social, and economic exchange between the U.S. and Cuba impact the lives of Cuban women and men, I faced practical, ethical, and political challenges to employing feminist research methods given this particular social context. While Smith (2001) argues that starting from the lived experiences of the marginalized is critical to feminist epistemology and research, in practice there are important practical, ethical, and political difficulties in conducting research on women and men of color within contexts of multiple sites of oppression and political risk. This paper reveals preliminary themes of “risk” in telling these stories even when the risk and need of telling the stories is emphasized by respondents themselves through narratives such as: a) Let me show you what they don’t show tourists; b) Let me tell you but we need to keep moving; c) You can’t write here-we don’t know who is watching. The goal of the paper is to highlight questions about how to ethically conduct feminist research methods that attempt to address unequal power relations between the researcher and respondents within multilayered sites of international, national, and local systems of oppression that make exchange part of “el bloqueo” and the stories from marginalized groups high risk.
