A Female Anthropologist. Knowledge Determined by Gender

Abstract

The article is concerned with the role which the researcher’s gender plays in gaining anthropological knowledge. The author uses her field research conducted in Muslim communities of western Macedonia to analyse gender relations, the status of women within the society, and the influence of emigration connected with work on the transfer of values. These issues affect the way a female anthropologist is perceived, as a woman and as a researcher. A female ethnographer is forced into local categories, to which she must adjust in terms of clothing, behaviour and manner of expressing views and opinions. She is regarded as an outsider (a Christian from beyond the village), ergo a sexually accessible woman. It causes difficulties in conducting ethnographic research among men, i.e. establishing professional relations with them, as well as in approaching women, who rarely show themselves in public. The situation alters with the change in the female anthropologist’s life situation (marriage, pregnancy). Perceiving the researcher through the prism of her sexuality and establishing power relations between the researcher and the respondent on the basis of the female anthropologist’s status has a considerable influence on the collected data, due to the change in both the spectrum of interlocutors and the subjects brought forth by such relations