Gender and Prison Ethnography. Some Fieldwork Implications

Doing ethnographic research in a prison implies that the researcher participates, overtly or covertly, in the people's daily lives for an extended period of time. Ethnographers study people in their natural settings, seeking to document that world in terms of the meanings and behaviour of the people in it. This makes the researcher the primary research instrument, accessing the field, establishing field relations and conducting and structuring observations. So ethnography has a large constructional and reflexive character whereby the observer, the researcher, with all of his characteristics such as his gender, stands at the heart of ethnography. Especially when the research setting, being a Belgian prison, can be characterised as a context where gender, and specifically masculinity, forms part of its cultural characteristics. In this contribution we aim to demonstrate some ways in which gender shapes interactions during prison fieldwork, ultimately even causing a 'pain' or 'challenge' for the (fe)male researcher. By discussing extracts of field notes of ethnographic research in Belgian prisons, we illustrate the various ways in which gender can affect the research process and can also be used as a source of knowledge for understanding cultural dimensions of the researched setting.

ISBN:978-90-5718-263-1

Publication year:2013

Keywords:Gender, Prison, Ethnography, Fieldwork