Abstract ID: 3.11837 | Accepted as Talk | Talk/Oral | TBA | TBA

Fieldwork is as much a social phenomenon as it is an individual phenomenon, invariably affecting all studies, especially those conducted in unfamiliar and unacquainted social settings not by an isolated researcher but rather created by all people in the social situation being studied, wherein the ethnographer undergoes a process of continual discovery enabling them to interpret and reinterpret their own cultural and personal domestic context. I situate myself as an unmarried and unescorted Indian female ethnographer in Nepal, who occasionally found herself in remote locations where water and sanitation systems were poorly developed thus increasing the risk of parasitic infections, and in places where her interaction was limited to men who belonged to distinct cultural and linguistic backgrounds. In the session, I will draw on my fieldwork experiences, and will underscore the challenges confronted in the field in the capacity of a culturally outsider woman whose presence was sometimes largely (mis)construed by men as an invitation for casual dalliance. However, by working alone, I afforded the leisure to be socially and psychologically mobile thus facilitating greater empathic involvement in enticing social circumstances. Sustained involvement with people in the field helped me earn the status of a marginal native in whom people could confide with gossips and potentially sensitive information. In the session, I will reflect on the liminal position where ethnographers find themselves between and betwixt the worlds.