Feminist research in times of COVID-19
(2020) Feminist Perspectives in Peace and Conflict Studies — Location: Kleeve, Germany (moved online due to Covid19) (17.June.2020)
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- Abstract
- Since the Coronavirus started to spread globally in March 2020, many social researchers from the Global Norths have been forced to cancel their field trips to the Global Souths. This is especially devastating for those whose research ethics are inspired by feminist theory and participant methods that live from the personal interaction between the researcher and their research participants. This paper draws on the experience of the author, a doctoral researcher from Belgium whose research ethics are inspired by an ‘ethics of care’, a normative feminist theory about the ideal ‘act of caring’ that is responsible, attentive, competent and responsive, and that considers research as a reciprocal act of care. Studying local resistance(s) to international women’s rights regimes in Jordan, her final field trip to Amman, which she had considered a corner stone of her ethical approach, was cancelled due to the Corona pandemic. This paper is a work-in-progress as it describes and reflects upon ongoing events. It looks into the challenges that this sudden global crisis poses to the key aspects of the author’s feminist-caring research ethics. These include methods that allow for participation, inclusiveness and co-construction on the one hand, and questions of responsibility, solidarity and Norths/Souths-power-relations on the other hand. By discussing the author’s response to these challenges, the paper gives an example of how unprecedented and unforeseen events such as the COVID-19 pandemic compel feminist researchers to become creative in terms of methods and to innovate when it comes to ethics, requiring challenging and unlearning certain conventional beliefs about social research.
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Citations
Sander, A. (2020). Feminist research in times of COVID-19. Feminist Perspectives in Peace and Conflict Studies, Kleeve, Germany (moved online due to Covid19). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/98600