Understanding or sympathy? On the role of solidarity in ethnographic and feminist methodology.
Olga Reznikova - University of Göttingen
Based on a series of field situations in the author’s research in protest movements in Moscow and New York over the last years, the talk will discuss the opportunities and limitations of feminist and collaborative methodology in ethnography. Where is the epistemological boundary between understanding and sympathy? What role do desire and loneliness play in the field? By means of a dialectical understanding of solidarity, the presentation deals with the methodological challenges in ethnographic research and poses the question of the particular nature of the relations between ethnographers and people in their field. What exactly can it mean to act as organic, ethical, engaged, or biased intellectuals? I argue that reflecting on the question of the conditions for producing ethnographic knowledge can also contribute to a better understanding of the concept of solidarity more broadly.