Fieldwork reflections

Aksana Ismailbekova

PhD candidate

Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology

Germany

Fieldwork experience

I conducted my ethnographic research in 2008 for my doctoral thesis. My research interests are democratization and kinship politics in rural Kyrgyzstan. While doing my research, I was often confronted with an ethical dilemma: my contradictory position as a researcher, an observer, and a bride [kelin] posed problems. In the context of rural Kyrgyzstan, there was the potential for my different positions to be incompatible, putting me in an uncomfortable position during fieldwork. My field was one of a complex web of obligations, and I could not avoid facing conflict. It was important for me to take into account several factors, such as how to respect the rules and the norms of the Kyrgyz community, the professional ethics and responsibility that come being an academic and conducting academic research, and the ethics entailed in international observation. I struggled to resolve these problems in a way that was acceptable to everyone. Let me give one colorful example, which illustrate these conflicting principles.

Being a Kyrgyz Woman

Taking the interview

In Kyrgyzstan, I am a very young bride. However, during my research I was not accepted by men as the ‘right’ kind of person to do research, and to be involved in politics. At the same time, I was not considered the ‘right’ kind of bride to be involved in the conversation of the brides. Despite having to deal with such contradictory positions, I nevertheless conducted the interviews that were part of this research myself. However, I should admit that it was my husband who mainly established social relations with high state officials, and engaged my informants in political discussions (on my behalf). On one occasions, I prepared a set of questions to ask my informants on the private farm. But I soon found that instead of addressing me, my informants kept looking at my husband and replied to him. Sometimes, my informants would hint at my husband, in order to suggest that he should approach them at later time, alone, and obtain further information then. They did not contemplate that I was the researcher! I would call myself the ‘invisible person’ in ‘men’s real talk’. Whenever my husband asked some questions or showed any interest in the lives of my informants, men would take him very seriously, and spend time contributing to my data. It was only via my husband that I could reach some very important people, understand their businesses, and make sure that they accepted us despite our relatively young age in a hierarchically structured society in which women have little status and few avenues of influence.

This definitely implies that so-called ‘the real politics’ is discussed among men and totally gendered. Due to the limitations, I encountered (being a woman), I did not have access to the informal talks that took place between men, behind the scenes. Moreover, men did not feel comfortable discussing politics with an unrelated married woman, and they therefore only talked to me in the presence of my husband. Often I simply had to explain to my informants that my husband was an understanding person who would permit me to talk to men.

On the other hand, local men looked on my husband strangely because he was permitting his wife to discuss politics with complete strangers. So I studied patronage by participating in various events. Sometimes I could talk to the patron’s close friends, but they remained skeptical, and were not always open with me—rather only open with my husband. As a woman, I learnt that the only thing I could learn to observe was men’s behaviour, such as the way in which men resolved their problems. This idea come to me when my husband did not find the way in which other men in Kyrgyz resolved a problem surprising, while I found their behaviour unusual, and I thus found it interesting to begin to understand these two different of points of views.

I was seen and accepted as a bride [kelin] within the community, which was as a result of my gender, status, and age. The expectations of a bride [kelin] contradicted my status as a researcher—that is, as a researcher; I was someone who was independent, free to ask questions, with no obligations. A young bride was expected to live with her husband’s parents, cook them food, and take care of the children. In the village, my position as a young bride was one of the lowest, and as a result, I was actively involved in my ‘official’ role—as a bride [kelin], I was allowed to clean the house of some of my older informants, wash their dishes, and cook their food. In fact, the women in the village did not tell me what to do. Instead, I was expected to know my role as a bride [kelin] and help them even without being asked. Otherwise, I would gain the reputation of being a ‘bad bride’. If a foreign researcher was to help with the daily work in the house, they would be respected and admired, and respected and accepted within the community. In my particular case, it was expected that I knew my place in society. Despite struggling to be an acceptable bride [kelin], I still was not a good bride [kelin] because I was writing a book, or doing research, which implied that I had the freedom to ask and talk to people irrelevant of their age, gender, and status. Usually brides did not address their fathers-in-law or elder brother-in-laws directly, and they certainly could not utter the name of elders. However, I was not free because of the pressure I felt from my old informants to behave correctly. People considered me a bad bride [kelin], despite being a bad kelin they would nevertheless not allow me to go to the field to watch the harvesting and people compressing the maize by claiming that in general women should not go there [aial kishi barbait]. People would soon find out and make me feel very uncomfortable. So, I had to convince my husband to go with me, which he did.