RACE AND NATIONALITY IN THE FIELD: THE PRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE, POSITIONALITY, AND IDENTITY

“Why did you all think I was white?” I asked my in-country advisor about three weeks into my initial visit to Maputo, after we had established a rapport. “Oh, because the people who come here from the U.S. to do research are white.” My advisor's statement was telling and opens the door to an analysis of issues of race and the production of knowledge about African people, culture, and politics. Southern African women scholars have expressed their frustration around the fact that publishers, journals, etc. in the West privilege material written about them by Westerners rather than material written by them (see Meena Reference Meena1992, among others). My advisor's comment reflects the experience of many scholars in southern Africa; often knowledge production about African women's lives is conducted by non-African scholars from the North, for consumption by non-African audiences in the North. This is problematic because epistemological issues (who can be the knower and articulator of whose experience) follow us into the field and in some instances color the interactions that we have with other scholars in the site, as well as informants. Subsequently, regional scholars and informants' experiences with other researchers who preceded me had an impact on their perception of me and of my work and at times called into question my qualifications as a researcher.

My identity as an African American woman researcher in Mozambique initially cast me as an anomaly, or at least a curious oddity with regard to the community's perception of the normal field researcher from the U.S. I cannot say whether my blackness got me more interviews (many women had already had contact with other researchers from the U.S. with regard to their life experiences), a warmer response in various social situations, or more personal accounts of particular events. Nor did it garner me immunity from charges by southern African women scholars that I was part of the process of the re-colonization of knowledge. I could not ignore the legacy of U.S./Western imperialism in Mozambique, the region, or academia. As many of us know, solidarity and shared experiences based solely on gender cannot be taken for granted (Mohanty Reference Mohanty, Mohanty, Russo and Torres1991). Neither can the prospect of shared experiences be dismissed. My positionality as a member of a subaltern group (as an African American woman), presented the possibility of solidarity with the women of southern Africa based on this subaltern status that sat at the nexus of my experience of gender and race in the United States. And as many scholars have noted, “the nature of [the anthropologist's] data is largely determined by his [social] identity as seen by his subjects” (Cicourel Reference Cicourel1964; see also Tsuda Reference Tsuda2003, 10).

As Michael Hanchard suggests, my identity in the field as a scholar, a researcher, a woman, and an African American “had as much to do with [Mozambicans'] views on Blackness in the United States as it had to do with me as an individual” (Reference Hanchard, Twine and Warren2000, 167). This identity was both formed internally and externally. As a participant-observer, I built a rapport with my informants by responding to their questions and inquiries about the lives and conditions of African American women in the United States. These probing questions led to my own act of reflection on my identity from a space as far away geographically and politically as Mozambique. Responding in an honest and forthcoming manner to questions or comments about my country, my life, and status based on my gender and race mitigated my strangeness and forced me to reflect, from a very different perspective, on my life as a black woman academic.

“OLA MENINA!” GENDER AND IDENTITY IN INFORMAL SETTINGS IN THE FIELD

Problematizing my race and genderFootnote ³ within the professional setting of discussions, interactions, and interviews with informants and other academics was different than having these discussions with my friends/informants. Those who have conducted field research in another country for more than three months know the importance of developing friendships in the field that will sustain you. In addition to my advisor, American ex-patriots, fellow Fulbrighters, and American embassy staff, I developed close friendships with three Mozambican women, all of whom were within five years either side of the age of 30. These women became my cohort, friends, and sounding board, and kept me grounded in the field. They also provided me with frank, urban Mozambican women's perspectives and strategies on behavior and social norms with regard to sexual harassment and unsolicited attention.

“Psss psss pss!” I hissed back as we passed a group of men on the busy baixo streets of Maputo with my friend Olga.Footnote ⁴ Sensing my irritation, Olga half jokingly cautioned me to stop responding to catcalls in this manner or I was going to “get us hurt.” As being on the receiving end of this unsolicited attention was the norm for me on a daily basis, I barely heard Olga's admonishments and kept my quick pace. The fact of the matter was that upon leaving my apartment to go for interviews, to the market, or to the embassy, I was greeted on the street with leers/calls of “Ola menina” (girl) or “Ola fofinha” (soft cuddly woman) and “Pss, psss, pssss!” every time I walked out the door. This experience of negotiating catcalls and intimidating behavior from local men is not an experience that is new to women researchers in their field sites. Gifford and Hall-Clifford correctly point out that women have “special concerns” with regard to close “social scrutiny based on the body” (Reference Gifford and Hall-Clifford2008, 26). This close social scrutiny leads to “safety concerns and resulting restrictions on movement; management of reputation in the field site while maintaining an independent research schedule and actually conducting our research” (Gifford and Hall-Clifford Reference Gifford and Hall-Clifford2008, 26–27).

Researchers are judged, liberated, or constrained by the social norms that we carry with us from our native society into the field. However, we are also judged, liberated, or constrained by the social norms of the site in which we conduct our research. Simply learning these norms and social behavior is an enormous part of fieldwork. Reconciling these norms with your own beliefs or personal politics complicates the matter even further. In the field, one is continuously negotiating one's whole self not only with the locals, but with oneself, in a manner that is conducive to conducting research (Tsuda Reference Tsuda2003). When it comes to navigating the professional and social identity of a Western woman field researcher, cultural and social norms around gender in the field take center stage. Rules with regard to catcalls and the appropriate responses to them in the U.S. were mitigated by my understanding of the norms in Maputo and my own feminist leanings.

My reaction to unsolicited comments and harassment on the streets or in cafes/restaurants varied according to my mood. Sometimes I ignored them, hissed back, glared, or threw a hostile gesture. My three Mozambican women friends had different reactions. Olga stated that it was a part of everyday life in the city for women who were walking alone or with other young women. It certainly did not help, she always added, that I was an exotic foreigner (exotic here by virtue of being a foreigner and an African American).Footnote ⁵ But she also cautioned me to be careful how I reacted as some men wouldn't hesitate to move beyond comments towards actual physical contact. Of course, she had her own car and drove virtually everywhere. Another friend, Cristina, would generally hiss back or shoot back, “pss psss is for cats; I am not a cat.” (Incidentally, it was from her that I originally gained the courage to hiss back.) Finally another friend just ignored them (she also took taxis everywhere, and did very little walking). These varied reactions represented three different ways of negotiating what was for me a daily annoyance at best and at worst a sometimes hostile space.

Norms and customs in Maputo made it generally acceptable for men to lob unsolicited remarks and catcalls at women (young women) walking down the street on a daily basis. Perhaps some thought it was harmless, perhaps others did not care. What I experienced as sexual harassment was in the eyes of some of my friends and informants no more than the norm for behavior of some men on the streets. This is not to say that my three friends were not bothered by it; to some degree or another they all at least noticed it. However, their reactions are telling in that all but one of them seemingly accepted it as a part of daily life, by either ignoring it or being afraid to respond out of fear of escalating the situation. As I spent most of my time travelling by chapa (public transportation), or taxi or on foot alone I couldn't help but notice, and despite my best attempts, be affected by what I considered an unwanted gaze upon my body. The catcalls and remarks in no way kept me from conducting my field research and I never felt that I was physically in danger of being attacked or even touched. But, I would argue that this gendered phenomenon belies the matrix of power relations from which these gazes emerge. I use this example in order to point out the ways in which my physical appearance (black, woman) thrust me in the middle of this power matrix and provided me with a firsthand experience of some of the norms that reflect patriarchal relations in the urban areas.

“WHAT IS KWANZAA?” INTERROGATING AFRICAN AMERICAN IDENTITY AND REALITY.Footnote ⁶

Olga and I sat sipping beer and eating calamari in a restaurant down by Maputo Bay immersed in an intense conversation about African American politics, culture, and identity. I was used to fielding questions from strangers about my self identification as uma americana Footnote ⁷ and as an African American woman. However, Olga's comments and questions were more subtle and penetrating. As she was an informant who became a very close friend, I was at ease with her and we discussed everything from politics in Mozambique to our friends and family. When she asked what Kwanzaa was, and why African Americans “invented” it, I wasn't surprised. I explained to her what I thought to be the truth; that Kwanzaa is an effort on the part of some African Americans to reconnect with their roots, forge a new bond with Africa the “cultural homeland” that they had been ripped from by slavery. In her usual flip manner, she dismissed it as culturally inauthentic, by saying that there was nothing African about Kwanzaa. Intrigued and a bit annoyed, I asked her how she felt about African Americans identifying themselves as African Americans, when it could be argued that the African part of this moniker was culturally inauthentic. She said that she was fine with it and that she thought that it was appropriate.

In some respects this exchange is akin to the opening vignette in which my Mozambican in country advisor thought that I was white. Both experiences speak to the liminal space that I occupied as an African American woman academic in the field in Mozambique. My American dollars spoke louder than my skin color in my opening vignette, allowed me to work out in the posh hotel gym and walk into any restaurant and be served regardless of what I was wearing. In many instances, I, like other African Americans who were foreigners in other parts of the developing world, occupied that liminal space afforded to me by the foreignness of my black American status.

Olga's questions go to the heart of social identity as it is constructed both internally and externally not only in the U.S. but also in other parts of the world, which follows one into the field. While her ideas and assumptions about black Americans were based on personal interactions that she had in her travels abroad, other's perceptions about me and ostensibly African Americans were based instead on media portrayals of black American culture that dominate international airwaves. However, Olga's seemingly contradictory ideas about the authenticity of Kwanzaa versus the moniker African American reveals an ambiguity about African Americans that is a result of this most current type of cultural imperialism. The images that are transmitted abroad are distorted images that don't capture the complexity of African American reality and identity in the U.S.; nonetheless these images of the black Americans are the ones that many Mozambicans hold, know, or align with or against. Thus the ambiguity in some instances represents a disconnect between African American realities and the “bling” lifestyle transmitted through pop culture that seemingly sets black Americans apart from the rest of the black developing world.