DOING FEMINIST ETHNOGRAPHY IN THE `WILDERNESS' AROUND MY HOMETOWN

• Published in: International Review for the Sociology of Sport
• Main Author: Pedersen, Kirsti
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publications 1998
• Subjects: Social Sciences (miscellaneous); Sociology and Political Science; Norway; Northern Norway
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/101269098033004006; http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/101269098033004006

This article discusses my experiences as an ethnographer in a `wilderness' community located in far northern Norway. The main aim of the fieldwork was to study how the ideologies, practices and experiences of outdoor life structured relationships between women and men and how this, in turn, affected ideologies of gender. I analyse the relationships between the researcher and the informants as gendered actors and between the researcher and the social and cultural contexts of the research process. More specifically, I examine my fieldworker experiences in women-only, men-only, and gender-mixed but male-dominated settings. The analysis is linked to ongoing debates about reflexivity and `situated knowledge' — how we know what we know and whose knowledge is visible and invisible.