Vulnerable Observers: Notes on Fieldwork and Rape

W hile I was in Johannesburg for my dissertation fieldwork on Chinese entrepreneurs, I spent eight months living in Chinatown with “Mr. Z,” a respected businessman who, as I later learned, was also a mafia boss and human smuggler. As I delved deeper into my fieldwork and grew to know Mr. Z, he became akin to an uncle while I also realized he was necessarily part of the story. So when I could, with great caution, I followed Mr. Z to the peripheries of his world.

My rapist was not Mr. Z but a member of his innermost circle — his “money collector.” I hardly knew my rapist; I did not even know his name. He was the tall, wiry guy I had eaten dinner with many times, let into the house, and would greet on the street. Before that night, I had written four unremarkable sentences about him in my field notes. Then one evening Mr. Z invited me to have dinner with him and his friends — a fieldwork opportunity I always accepted. Because he had other plans later, he asked the money collector to take me home, where he then raped me. Mr. Z was as much of a gatekeeper in my fieldwork as he was in my rape: The rapist was Mr. Z’s friend and subordinate, and it happened under his roof and watch that night. What happened to me was an ordinary acquaintance rape of extraordinary circumstances.

In the immediate days that followed, it is not an exaggeration to say that I feared for my life. With one unforeseen event, a situation that had felt fairly safe rapidly escalated into dangerous. For more reasons than one, I did not involve the police: In a country with an astonishingly high rate of rape and a notoriously corrupt police force, I did not believe the police (even with the involvement of the U.S. embassy) would protect me. Nor would the criminal-justice system deliver me meaningful justice.

Instead I turned to Mr. Z, who governed this world. I wanted him to know what the money collector had done, and I needed to inoculate any threat I presented, as I was no longer his houseguest but the raped American researcher. Although he expressed some sympathy, his allegiances were with his money collector. We tacitly agreed that I wouldn’t pursue charges and he wouldn’t harm me.

Having completed a significant amount of research, I could have abruptly ended my fieldwork. Instead, I chose to take a leave and later returned to finish what I had started. I refused to allow my rapist to take my fieldwork after already taking my body.

In The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart, Ruth Behar quotes Clifford Geertz: “You don’t exactly penetrate another culture, as the masculinist image would have it. You put yourself in its way and it bodies forth and enmeshes you.” This is my story about rape, but it is more than that, too.

It’s about the sexual politics of doing risky fieldwork — an unfinished account of how a fieldworker experiences a trauma like rape and of the price many of us pay, but do not openly discuss. It’s about the conflict between research ethics and justice — and a failure of systems of accountability. What does it mean to produce knowledge through an experience that includes trauma? How do we talk about, or render unspeakable, rape and sexual violence in anthropology? What is the role of the university in all this? In considering those questions, three main issues rose to the surface for me.

The competing needs of researchers and subjects. In doing my research, I am accountable to my university’s institutional review board for certain ethical considerations. The IRB was not at the front of my mind in the midst of this crisis. Eventually I wondered at what point my own safety and vulnerability could trump that of my informants (e.g., research subjects). Hypothetically, if I reported my rapist to the police, what kind of information would I divulge about Mr. Z — who is an informant, witness, and vulnerable subject in relation to the law? How would I reconcile endangering a key informant? Was my rapist considered an informant, too? Most likely my protection would be at odds with that of the institution to which I am beholden.

Historically and for good reason, IRBs were created to protect human research subjects in biomedical and social-behavioral research. As such, Mr. Z and my rapist’s protection as research subjects trumps mine as researcher. Moreover, any institutional concern for my safety revolves around the university not wanting to be held responsible if something grave were to happen to me. The fieldworker body is merely a liability.

To my relief, people on my university’s IRB were sympathetic and expressed concern for me. However, it remains a problem that researchers are institutionally recognized primarily as agents of harm or liability, in relation to their research subjects. In reality, ethics, risk, harm, vulnerability, and power are far messier between researchers and subjects than IRBs allow, especially with social research like ethnography.

Advocating for my needs upon return to the university has also proved difficult. Although my trauma has not been debilitating, on occasion I do plummet down a rabbit hole, and the trajectory of recovery is unpredictable. Nearing the end of my guaranteed funding, I considered “stopping my clock.” However, that entails stopping income and health care, which is not a viable option for me.

I am grateful for the kindness of individual mentors and peers. But institutions need to find better ways to support the mental-health needs of their graduate students. Providing research assistantships, medical leaves with benefits, and therapeutic support for post-fieldwork readjustment would be a good start.

Fieldwork and rape. Because the rape occurred during fieldwork, I compartmentalized the trauma as something that happened to “researcher me” in a faraway place. Seeing the rape as a fieldwork event helped me to intellectualize it and thus distance myself from it, but the hyper-analysis also undid me. In the habit of constantly analyzing my self-presentation and interactions with others, I replayed every move I made that night.

Even though I knew it was not my fault, for a long time, I believed it was. As it goes, I took things too far to be safe. By overly immersing myself in the field, I lost too much critical distance to read risk and assess my options after the rape. I was too enamored with the pursuit of the illicit to drop a dangerous side project. Like Icarus, I flew too close to the sun and fell into the sea.

I could never separate the rape from my fieldwork. In the midst of this personal crisis, I turned to my closest research informants to help me navigate the situation. But when I returned from my leave, I had to manage the rumors and rape stigma at my research site. I ended up abandoning several interviews, including a crucial one with Mr. Z. Research standards require scholars to obtain consent for interviews. I thought: How perverse and ironic would it be to explain at the beginning of the interview that, as a researcher, I would protect Mr. Z and minimize harm to him at all costs, and then ask for his consent?

The rape and its aftermath have left an indelible imprint on my work in unexpected ways. The trauma of what happened both motivates and haunts my writing. I am deeply critical of how anthropologists exercise power over their subjects by virtue of writing about and thus representing them. Yet in the absence of justice and closure, I cling to writing about these powerful men as an available form of taking back power.

The price of risky research. When ethnographers can access and immerse themselves in worlds unknown, such as illicit ones, their work is valued and rewarded. Within the academic version of celebrity, the risk-taking, intrepid, normatively white and male ethnographer is a star. The price that many ethnographers pay in pursuing their fieldwork is not always recognized, and rape carries a particular stigma.

By the same token, it is perhaps no coincidence that some male academics have questioned my intentions in writing about this experience — as careerism. One professor, who was puzzled about why I would write about rape, asked me if “it was in fashion,” as if there was little merit, intellectual or otherwise, to sharing such an experience. A well-meaning professor joked that, if my work were bad, this essay about rape could be my “ticket to fame.” (“But don’t worry, your work is actually really good, so publish the essay later.”) The recasting of rape as a desirable career event serves only to silence and shame, and provides yet another example (if indeed we needed one) that academe has not escaped the insidiousness of rape culture.

There are professional concerns at stake here, too. As a graduate student, I do not want writing about this to forever define my career. Nor do I want to be reduced to conference gossip, a reputation, or a cautionary tale.

In sharing my story with other academics, I have encountered a range of telling responses. While many academics are critical of a rape culture that blames survivors and excuses rapists, they are not immune to that culture. “What was she wearing?” is translated into a presumed flaw in research design and implementation, a lack of methods training and rigorous oversight. The most hostile response I faced came from a female professor who berated me with detailed questions about my fieldwork, wanting me to admit I had made a mistake.

Before my least sympathetic critics, I felt “put on trial” not for my personal life but for my approach to my research. I was forced to defend my competence, sensibilities, and the legitimacy of my intellectual project. Perhaps there is nothing surprising there. Academics think about methodology and critique often ungenerously, easily reproducing the hallmarks of rape culture: She is to blame, not credible, illegitimate, and should be silenced and shamed.

Some of my sympathizers want to blame someone else — my advisers, teachers, or university. That very desire to place blame on anyone except my rapist and the structures that deem women rapable is precisely the logic of rape culture. Blame is beside the point.

Rape can happen in any context, anywhere in the world. It is not a “risk” that can be easily regulated or prevented through education. What universities can do is support researchers who must quickly exit their fieldwork as a result of a trauma, and then promote their well-being upon their return.

To be clear, nothing could have prevented or prepared me for the rape, but rape’s stigma within anthropology did not help, either. Researchers talk openly about fieldworkers negotiating unwanted sexual dynamics. Yet rape — cut from the same cloth of sexual violence and the sexual politics of ethnography — demarcates where this conversation stops. It remains unspeakable. For example, when you’re leaving to do fieldwork, nobody mentions it outright. Even among feminist ethnographers, it is implicitly communicated through advice about wearing wedding rings and not consuming alcohol or traveling alone at night.

Despite the extreme aspects of my story, it should not be dismissed as aberration. Sexual violence during fieldwork is a reality we should be talking about. I know I am not alone in this experience.