Going Home: A Feminist Anthropologist's Reflections on Dilemmas of Power and

Positionality in the Field

Author(s): M. Cristina Alcalde
Source: Meridians, Vol. 7, No. 2 (2007), pp. 143-162
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40314252
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M. CRISTINA ALCALDE

Going Home
A Feminist Anthropologist's Reflections

Dilemmas of Power and Posítíonalíty

in the Field

Abstract

In this essay, I draw on my jieldwork in lima, Peru to critically explore the power relationships

uríthín my oiün/eminíst research and practice and illustrate tuhatjeminist research in one's oum so-

ciety might include. I pay special attention to my roles as academic and advocate and reflect on how
power asymmetries based on race, educational status, and class were both reproduced and reshaped
during myjieldiüork, and how mij feminist research agenda and partial insider status were directly
tied to the creation and continuation of these power asymmetries. As I illuminate potential dilem-

mas, rewards, and difficulties that may result jromjeminist research in one's own society, I fore-
ground the potential for effecting social changejrom uríthin, the researcher's social responsibility and

engagement in thejield, and the blurring of boundaries between insider and outsider.

My anthropological research focuses on domestic violence against women.

When I began my fieldwork in Lima, Peru in 2001, my goal was to identify
and understand women's everyday strategies for surviving and challenging
intimate and institutional violence amid poverty, racism, and sexism while
personally engaging with women to contribute to their efforts to lead vio-
lence-free lives. By the time I concluded the research process, it had become
clear that my own positionality played a significant role in the dilemmas and

[Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 2007, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 143-162]

©2007 by Smith College. All rights reserved.

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 conflicts that arose during my fieldwork, in my interpretations of these di-
lemmas and conflicts, and in my evolving views of what feminist research
consisted of and what it could achieve in my relationships with women.
While neither the history of feminist anthropology nor that of native anthro-
pology (doing research "at home") is the main topic of this essay, a few
words on these topics are necessary in order to frame the discussion of the
research process.
Feminist research strives for reciprocity, collaboration, and advocacy in
the researcher-participant relationship in an attempt to address longstand-
ing inequalities based on gender, race, and class in participants' lives and in
the researcher-participant relationship. In 2001-2002, 1 attempted to in-
clude these elements in my fieldwork in my hometown of Lima, Peru.
In this essay, I draw on my fieldwork experience to critically explore the
power relationships within my own feminist research and practice and to il-
lustrate what feminist research in one's own society might include. I pay spe-
cial attention to my roles as academic and advocate and reflect on how power
asymmetries based on race, educational status, and class were both repro-
duced and reshaped during my fieldwork, and how my feminist research
agenda and partial insider status were directly tied to the creation and contin-
uation of these power asymmetries. As I illuminate the potential dilemmas,
rewards, and difficulties that result from feminist research in one's own soci-
ety, I foreground the possibility of effecting social change from within, the
researcher's social responsibility and engagement in the field, and the blur-
ring of boundaries between insider and outsider. I write from the perspective
of a Peruvian woman trained as an anthropologist in the U.S., yet the experi-
ences I discuss will likely also apply to other scholars and activists doing fem-
inist research in their communities or countries.

Conducting fieldwork away from one's own society is still the norm among
anthropologists, but the meanings attached to the field of ethnography and to
the role of the ethnographer have changed substantially over the last three de-
cades as native anthropology and feminist anthropology have gained visibility
and acceptance. Today anthropology includes a large, and growing, group of
anthropologists who conduct fieldwork in their own countries or communi-
ties of origin and in their native languages (Myerhoff 1978; Ginsburg 1989;
Kondo 1990; Abu-Lughod 1993; Narayan 1993; Visweswaran 1994; Lewin
1995; Agar 1996; D'Alisera 1999; de la Cadena 2000). Yet just as shared experi-
ences and solidarity based solely on gender cannot be assumed (Mohanty

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1988; Nelson 1994), "simply by being of the country/ culture/ group/ family,
one is not automatically guaranteed infinite and nonterminable knowledge of
the culture" (Panourgiá 1994, 46). Distance from essentialized views of iden-
tity allows us to appreciate better the multiple voices and forms of inequality
that exist within a society and reminds us of the diversity of conflicts that may
result among "natives." Depending on the native researcher's class status and
goals, she may even directly or indirectly benefit from the inequality in her so-
ciety (Jones 1995, 61).
Feminist anthropologists have examined gender inequality and human
rights issues across cultures and have "been vocal in condemning acts of vio-
lence against women. They have opposed acts of aggression that occur not
only on battlefields elsewhere or on the twilight frontiers of inner cities but
also closer to home, on university campuses that can be hotbeds of perilous
masculinities" (Aggarwal 2000, 25). Unfortunately, we have not focused on vi-
olence in the home. The few anthropologists who have written about domestic
violence have done so in relation to other people and places, not to the anthro-
pologist's own society or culture (see Adelman 1997; Counts, Brown, and
Campbell 1999; McClusky 2001). l Such generalized silence regarding inti-
mate-partner violence against women does little to challenge simplistic no-
tions of cultural relativism (i.e., "it's part of their culture") that negatively
affect women, and should be especially disturbing in a discipline whose funda-
mental concern is the interaction of cultural ideas, practices, and individuals.

Going Home to the Field

I lived in Lima until I was seven years old. Since that time, I have returned to
Lima almost every year and for months at a time on several occasions. In spite
of occasionally being called gringa, my connections to Lima are strong, and I
identify at least as much with Peru as I do with the United States. While the
language I use for professional purposes is English, Spanish is the only lan-
guage I speak and feel comfortable speaking with my Peruvian family and
with my Peruvian-American son. In Peru I am white; in the United States I am
a nonwhite Latina. As in other parts of Latin America, in Peru whiteness is a
social category that does not necessarily depend on skin color. Class, social
status, education, and place of origin all contribute to one's "race." In 2000 1
entered the field in Lima as a young, middle-class, heterosexual, married stu-
dent. I wished to understand the different survival strategies and individual

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 forms of resistance to male and institutional violence that women developed
in the midst of poverty and structural racism, sexism, and class bias. I was
hopeful that my research would contribute to a more profound and informed
understanding of women's lives and would support calls to end violence
against women in Peru.
As a global problem, domestic violence affects approximately one in three
to four women. For Latin America, most studies estimate that between 30%
and 50% of women experience psychological abuse and 10% to 35% experi-
ence physical violence by an intimate partner (Buvinic, Morrison, and Shifter
1999, 3). According to a recent study in Lima, 51% of women interviewed had
been subjected to physical and sexual violence (Güezmes, Palomino, and
Ramos 2002). My own research interest in domestic violence developed dur-
ing a pre-dissertation field trip and family visit to Lima. After searching
through recently published materials on gender in Peru and speaking with
members of women's organizations in Lima, it became clear that intimate-
partner violence against women- a topic about which I knew little at the
time - needed more attention from academics. As a feminist Peruvian, I
wanted the topic of my dissertation to be relevant to women's lives in Peru.
As an academic-in-training, I also needed the topic to be relevant to my re-
search interests: gender, ethnicity, class, and reproductive health.
In deciding to focus on domestic violence among Peruvian women, I faced
one of my first dilemmas connected to doing research in my own society: on
which women should I focus? Although women of all backgrounds experience
domestic violence, it is usually the poorest and most marginalized women
whose experiences of violence are open to public scrutiny, regardless of
whether or not these women want their experiences to be publicly examined.
Wealthier women's greater access to social and economic resources gives
them a better chance of staying out of shelters and police stations, and thus of
avoiding the public eye. More concentrated public attention on domestic vio-
lence among the poor has led to stereotypes of poor men as especially violent
and of poor women as deviant and complicit in the violence they experience.
According to some authors, for large portions of the middle and upper
classes, poor women who live in shantytowns are

Dirty, promiscuous, ignorant women who don't think twice before be-
coming involved with the first man they meet, or with the second or third.
Lots of husbands in a short life full of children from different men: sexual

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 desire exaggerated by their lack of culture. Unnatural mothers who don't
hesitate to throw their young children to the streets to beg or work, in-
stead of sending them to school and feeding them a balanced diet. (Barrig
1982, 15)

This excerpt by journalist Maruja Barrig captures the common perception

among the wealthy that poor women, particularly recent migrants from rural
areas in the highlands, are filthy, promiscuous, irresponsible, and in gen-
eral, at fault. It is not merely coincidence that most of the women living in
shantytowns are indigenous and mestizas, as these views have at least as
much to do with class as they do with race. Such views are especially evident
in the popular sayings used to dismiss these women's experiences of domes-
tic violence as simply part of their culture. Upon hearing about a domestic-
violence case in a shantytown, wealthier Limeños may swiftly dismiss the
case as unimportant by referring to the popular sayings, "the more you beat
me, the more I love you" and "highland love." These sayings capture much of
the general sentiment and indifference toward violence against Peruvian
women who are poor, lack formal education, and migrate to Lima from rural
communities; the sayings would not be used to dismiss domestic violence as
something to be expected in the upper classes.
In light of the vast number of stereotypes foisted on Peruvian women from
the lower socioeconomic classes, one of the goals of my research was to con-
tribute to efforts to bring to light the affected women's own views of violence
and the survival and resistance strategies women create. I wanted to accentu-
ate women's agency while at the same time underscoring the limits placed on
women's individual agency by structural racism, sexism, and classism in
order to call attention to the need for collective action to prevent violence
against women in Peruvian society. My research focused on the experiences
of violence and resistance of generally poorer, darker, and less formally edu-
cated (than I) women. In Peru, the two darkest, poorest, and most discrimi-
nated-against sectors in Peruvian society are indigenous women from the
Andean highlands and the Amazon Basin (approximately 50% of the popula-
tion) and Afro-Peruvian women (3% of the population). Most of the women I
interviewed were indigenous women from the highlands, and within this
group of women several came from Quechua-speaking areas. They were
first- and second-generation migrants from rural areas who, unable to afford
Lima's existing housing, built homes in shantytowns.

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 Forging Relationships through Differences

The very real material differences and differential access to resources that
resulted from my own privileged position as a member of the middle class
who lived and studied abroad vis-à-vis the women whose participation made
my research possible cautioned me against idealizing the researcher-
participant relationship as a space of equality where historical inequalities
could somehow be momentarily erased. Because as a member of the middle
class in Lima I too play a role in perpetuating the inequality and discrimina-
tion poor women experience there, my social responsibility is both to use
available resources to support women's immediate needs and to recognize
the limits of my actions in the present in order to use my research more
broadly to challenge and contribute to changing existing prejudices that fos-
ter discrimination against poor women. It is to the topic of how socioeco-
nomic class and educational differences mediated relationships in the field
that I now turn.

In introducing myself to participants in my study on battered women's

lives, I identified myself as a Peruvian studying and living abroad. Peruvian
migration to the U.S. and elsewhere has become quite common in the last
three decades, and a large percentage of the population in Lima has a close
relative living abroad or one who is planning to migrate. Most of the ques-
tions I received regarding my personal life were related to my life and family
ties in Lima. Some women inquired about my ability to assist them in finding
jobs as domestic servants or cooks in homes in Lima. Because Peruvian un-
dergraduate and graduate students also conduct interviews, write theses, and
participate in internships as part of their education, most participants under-
stood my interest in working with battered women in connection to my
studies. Often, it was only when I brought up my husband's English-sound-
ing name that questions about my life in the U.S. came up.
After my initial acceptance as a Limeña by participants and brief exchanges
of comments and criticisms expressive of our mutual interest in the state of af-
fairs in Peru at the time, differences in our lives in Lima began to emerge. Lima
is a city of eight million people. I may be from Lima, but I am not familiar with
all of Lima and its districts. I am a woman, of middle-class background, and
have lived and studied in the U.S. for many years. I have always lived in cities
and Lima has always "felt" like the ideal home, with someone there to wel-
come me each time I arrive and a comfortable home in which to stay. Many of

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the women I interviewed were migrants from rural areas; racism and discrim-
ination characterized their arrival in the capital. I have family in parts of Lima
where some of the women I interviewed have worked as domestic servants but

will never live. Women live and have family in parts of the city where I have
never lived and which my family will not visit. I have never lived nor do I have
family in the parts of the city where most of the participants lived. I am in a
healthy, nonviolent relationship with my white American husband. The
women I met were in unhealthy, violent relationships with men from Peru.
Most were trying to escape from their husbands. I use birth control freely and
toward the end of my fieldwork had a planned pregnancy and gave birth. The
women I worked with most often wanted but did not have access to birth con-

trol, would be beaten when their husbands discovered they had used birth
control, and have unplanned pregnancies. My relationship with Virginia, a
4/9", very thin, 43-year-old woman whom I interviewed several times, was in
large part shaped by these differences.
Virginia is a native Quechua speaker and migrated to Lima from a small
Andean community as a young girl. By 2001, she had six children and had
had at least one miscarriage as a result of her first husband's beatings. Until
1988, she dressed in her community's traditional clothing and put her hair in
two long braids; she only began to wear "Western" clothes in order to avoid
discrimination in jobs, on the streets, and in dealing with state authorities.
I contacted Virginia through a nonprofit women's organization that Vir-
ginia had visited to explore options for dealing with her abusive husband.
The organization asked her if she would be interested in participating in the
research I was conducting. Once she expressed interest in meeting with me,
someone from the organization called me and gave me her phone number.
During our first phone conversation, I offered directions to our meeting
place. She asked me to repeat them and I did. A long pause followed. Virginia
then asked if I could repeat the directions to her twelve-year-old son. I had
not realized that she did not know how to read or write and my directions had
become too long simply to memorize.
As our meetings became more frequent, we grew more and more comfort-
able with each other and our mutual trust grew. Yet even as we spoke of the
most intimate details of her life, and sometimes of mine, the historical di-
chotomies of rich/poor, educated/less educated, urban/rural, and white/non-
white greatly influenced the dynamics of our relationship. In spite of the fact
that at the time of our first meeting, I was the same age as Virginia's oldest

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 daughter, Virginia insisted on addressing me as doctora, a term of respect
used to address doctors, lawyers, and psychologists. I explained that I was
not a doctora but a student who wanted to learn from her. She listened, but,
most likely due to my class background and education, she continued to ad-
dress me as doctora during the following months, and again in 2005 during
my most recent trip to Lima. I continued to address her as usted (formal you)
and Señora Virginia as a sign of respect. Each time we met, we spoke for
hours. Upon parting, Virginia returned to her home in the north of the city,
and I to my parents' home in a middle-class neighborhood on the opposite
side of the city- generations of my family had lived in neighborhoods like
the one in which I grew up and had hired and exploited women from neigh-
borhoods like Virginia's. Her experiences, and my interest in understanding
her experiences, brought us together but never close enough to make our so-
cial and economic realities disappear even temporarily.
In analyzing my relationship with Virginia, rather than attempt to erase
our differences, I view them as important reasons for the forging of our rela-
tionship. As a middle-class Peruvian woman who has lived and studied
abroad for most of her life, I was of interest to Virginia. I could offer her in-
formation, material resources, and perhaps job opportunities (through other
middle-class Peruvian acquaintances) to which she would not normally have
access. During our interviews and informal conversations, I listened to Vir-
ginia and provided information on available resources. I became the first per-
son with whom Virginia regularly spoke about her problems with her
husband. Together, we transformed the interview process into a space of em-
powerment for Virginia. As someone who had survived two abusive mar-
riages and whose experiences were significantly different from my own,
Virginia was of interest to me. She offered me information on her survival
strategies for coping with her first and then her second husband, both of
whom abused her physically, sexually, and verbally. Even today, rereading
transcripts from our meetings allows me to identify obstacles she faced and
new directions for my research. More personally, our relationship pushed
me to explore the different ways I could contribute to alleviating the difficul-
ties women confront on an everyday basis. In addressing women's immedi-
ate needs, I found that the boundaries between my roles as academic and
advocate became blurred, and as I describe in the following sections, some-
times the power asymmetries I hoped to challenge as a feminist researcher
became reinforced in part because of my position within Peruvian society.

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Academics and Advocates

During an interview in 2001, the founder and director of the oldest battered
women's shelter in Lima summarized her interpretation of the conflict of in-
terest between academics and activists who focus on women's issues and vi-

olence in Lima with the following words:

Academics specialize, they search for their own space and to survive,
right? To survive and that's why they acquire funds and ignore us. And
they say, "Oh, that place is too dangerous, let's not go there" and I don't
know what else ... So then, while they [referring to women academics],
the majority of them, speak several languages and etcetera etcetera, they
have more power to lobby [for their own projects rather than projects to
benefit shelters directly] ... we [activists] participate in everyday life ... it
is a world which I believe those on top [academics] do not yet see.

The shelter director's words refer to all academics. However, she was par-
ticularly wary of academics with whom she had worked since the founding of
her shelter in 1983, and these were Peruvian academics. According to this di-
rector, Peruvian academics had knowledge of the racism, discrimination,
and violence poor women encountered and because of this they should be es-
pecially interested in and capable of working alongside activists with whom
they shared national and cultural affiliations. However, in the director's ex-
perience, instead of working alongside activists, academics too often took
time and other resources away from shelters by demanding that someone ex-
plain the shelter structure to them and by asking for interviews and other
forms of detailed information from shelters while failing to contribute to ex-
isting, immediate projects in the shelters. Academics seemed to prefer to live
in separate spheres from activists and only to enter the world of activists
when convenient for a research project for which funding was needed. The
director provided a few examples of researchers who had entered the shelters
only to collect data and then leave, without ever giving back to the shelter.
While the scholars the shelter director referred to probably do not view their
relationship with the shelter in such negative terms and as contributing to in-
equality, the lack of communication between the researchers and the activ-
ists did little to explain to those being studied how scholarship could effect
change and benefit the shelters and the women in them.
Differences between activists and academics working on domestic vio-

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 lence may not ever disappear, partly because the demands of a university ca-
reer and battered women's immediate and practical needs are very difficult, if
not impossible, to fully reconcile. At the same time, it is still the case that
many feminist researchers continue to attempt to blend research and advo-
cacy and to see and influence the everyday worlds we study. Seeing the world
"those on top do not yet see" was one of my research goals, yet even as a Pe-
ruvian "insider" I too entered the sphere of battered women's everyday lives
and activism in Lima temporarily and for a research project.
In the aptly titled article, "Beyond Writing Culture: Feminist Practice and
the Limits of Ethnography," Enslin (1994) calls on academics to develop
"practical accountability." Writing is important for cross-cultural under-
standing and to academic careers, but researchers must also seriously con-
sider committing to practices that transcend writing and academia and make
useful contributions to the local community. In Enslin's case, her activism
took place within the literacy movements in Nepal (Enslin 1994). The reputa-
tion of academics in the world of shelters in Lima underscores Enslin's call

for academics to engage with the local community in ways that are useful to,
and can be understood by, the community both in the short and long term.
During my fieldwork, I also questioned the usefulness and limits of my
own writing and sought to contribute to the communities in which I became
involved through my research. I attended rallies, got my own family involved
in efforts to find housing and jobs for women, assisted women financially,
and provided needed services (typing, writing, childcare). I also became
deeply involved in the lives of three women, and I continue to visit these
women when I travel to Lima. I volunteered at a shelter for the duration of my
fieldwork to learn more about women's lives and as a form of reciprocity to
show my personal commitment to improving the lives of women. Like other
shelters in Lima, the shelter at which I volunteered was extremely under-
staffed, had few material resources, and relied primarily on the personnel's
poorly paid work, creativity, and goodwill toward residents for its continued
operation. It is to my involvement and position within the shelters that I now
turn.

The first two months of fieldwork, the period during which I concentrated
on gaining access to shelters for battered women, proved to be a particularly
eye-opening experience with regard to differences in positions and identities
in the field. Although I am from Lima, like the majority of Limeños I was un-
aware of the tensions and conflicts among various shelters and shelter direc-

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tors when I began my fieldwork. As a consequence, my initial choice of
which shelter director to contact opened the doors to one shelter but closed
the doors to others. As I was to witness, tensions among shelters and direc-
tors are due largely to the lack of resources available to all shelters, and to di-
rectors' different styles of running shelters, as well as their class, ethnic, and
educational backgrounds.
There are not many shelters in Lima- six in 2001- and although each is
different in appearance, its treatment of women, and the projects it develops
to generate funds, all shelters are precarious at best. Each shelter is in a dif-
ferent district in Lima, and, in a city of eight million, shelters can be very far
away from each other and from residents' homes. Shelters are small and
most have been founded by women from impoverished communities. These
women open their homes to battered women in the community or receive na-
tional and international donations to secure a house or lot on which to build

a shelter for women in the community. A small, extremely underpaid staff

runs the shelters. Although usually very helpful, the staff can also be inade-
quately trained due to a lack of funds.
Shelters typically have space for anywhere from five to twenty women and
children. However, lack of resources, particularly food, can force shelters to
drastically limit the number of women they admit over long periods of time.
Shelter regulations provide for a maximum stay of fifteen days, and women
are initially informed of this maximum. How long a woman actually stays,
however, is decided on a case-by-case basis. Shelter workers realize that fif-
teen days is not enough to undertake the complicated bureaucratic processes
battered women must negotiate as they seek to legally separate. At the same
time, they insist on keeping the fifteen days in their written regulations be-
cause of the impossibility of supporting residents for longer periods of time.
The shelter I initially contacted was directed by a white, middle-class
woman. This woman, I would later realize, was considered to be especially
bossy and paternalistic by other shelter directors. How I found out about the
existence of this director's shelter, and not the shelters of other directors,
was largely accidental. During a feasibility trip to Lima a little over a year be-
fore I began fieldwork, I attended a talk on violence against women at a
women's nonprofit organization and sat beside a friendly woman about my
age. After talking to each other for several minutes as we waited for the talk to
begin, she commented that she worked at a shelter. I told her that I was look-
ing for shelters in which to volunteer and through which to understand more

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 about battered women's experiences in Lima. She invited me to visit the shel-
ter, and, after several meetings with her and the director, we discussed and
put together a document to formalize an arrangement that allowed me access
to the shelter. The document stated my responsibilities and commitment to-
ward the shelter and its residents, as well as how I expected my research to
benefit from my being allowed to participate in day-to-day shelter activities
and decisions during my fieldwork. I returned to the U.S. knowing I had
found one of my main research sites and that I would volunteer at this shel-
ter; I was excited about the prospect of discovering and working with other
shelters upon my return to Lima a year later.
Soon after my arrival in Lima to begin fieldwork, I felt settled in my routine
at the shelter. Contacting and meeting other research participants through a
reproductive health clinic and through women's nonprofit organizations in
Lima proved challenging but not impossible during the first two months of
fieldwork. My many attempts to contact and visit two additional shelters,
however, proved unsuccessful. I feared I would never be invited to visit other
shelters in Lima, yet I did not know the reasons behind what I perceived to be
the directors' indifference. I was particularly puzzled because two of the staff
members at my shelter actively supported my efforts by mentioning my name
and speaking on my behalf to other shelter directors.
After several phone conversations, the second shelter director invited me
to talk to her in person and to see the shelter. When I arrived there, the direc-
tor suddenly remembered she had something else scheduled at the same
time and could not see me. We rescheduled my visit and I eventually became
a regular visitor at this second shelter and managed a few visits and inter-
views at a third shelter. Once the director at the second shelter and I became

more comfortable with each other, she explained to me that by first estab-
lishing a relationship with the particular shelter director I had met during my
feasibility trip and not the other two directors I later contacted, I had of-
fended the two shelter directors (including her) whom I had failed to contact
initially. I explained that I had not known of the existence of the other shel-
ters and that the reason that I had chosen to contact one shelter and not an-

other during my brief trip to Lima the previous year had more to do with
chance than with any sort of formal planning, but the damage had been
done.

Of the six shelter directors in Lima, the shelter director with whom I first
developed rapport was also the only white, middle-class shelter director.

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Ethnically, the second shelter director self-identified as indigenous and the
third as Afro-Peruvian. Both women were very well respected within the do-
mestic-violence-prevention community, and each had more than two de-
cades of activist work. Unfortunately for me, upon hearing that an academic
had chosen to work with the shelter where I was to volunteer, these two shel-
ter directors became suspicious of me. In part, they suspected that I, like the
shelter director I had first contacted, looked down on them.
In retrospect, I believe that becoming immersed in shelter politics and ten-
sions and the accompanying racial and class dynamics was unavoidable, be-
cause of the level of involvement I desired and ultimately achieved in the
shelters and in women's lives. At the same time, I wish I had known about
these tensions before I began my fieldwork so that I could have strategized
my entrance into the field more consciously. Although I was respectful of
participants and attempted to be conscious of my own biases and beliefs and
of how these could affect my interaction with women whose lives I wanted to
learn more about, I had not foreseen the very specific ways in which my class,
race, and education would affect my entrance into the shelters of Lima. As
the second and later shelter directors told me and as I discuss in the follow-

ing paragraphs, the fact that I am from Lima led the shelter directors whom I
did not contact initially (because I did not know of the existence of their shel-
ters) to expect me to know better than to act in ways that would so clearly of-
fend them.

One way I sought to alleviate suspicions surrounding my identity and in-

tentions once I gained access to the shelters was by becoming involved in and
contributing to existing shelter projects as much as I could. For example, at
the second shelter I visited I took on the task of creating a color catalogue of
the handicrafts residents made to generate funds for themselves and for the
shelter. I hoped the catalogue would assist shelter residents in marketing
their handicrafts, and I embarked on this project with the director's encour-
agement. As I met more women and came to know more and more about
their lives and the few resources available to them, my involvement in some
women's lives increased and the lines between academic and advocate be-
came increasingly blurred. In what follows I provide two examples of how
having dual roles as academic researcher and want-to-be-advocate was far
from seamless.

One afternoon, the shelter workers (a total of three women, plus me) at the
shelter at which I volunteered met to brainstorm about how the shelter would

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 continue to function regularly once the coordinator took her maternity leave.
There was no money to hire a replacement. The staff asked if I could cover
two of the days for which there was no one else available. I quickly agreed.
During the two months I covered those two extra days, for hours I was often
the only staff member at the shelter. I felt especially useful in the context of
doing research and enthusiastic that the staff trusted me as much as they did.
This period also proved beneficial to my research, as I developed a more
profound understanding of what a typical day at the shelter entailed. On a
more personal level, I came to feel part of the shelter and very close to some
of the women and their children staying there. In retrospect, although I felt
accepted by the shelter staff even before the coordinator took her maternity
leave, it was these two months of doing the work the other workers normally
did- beyond what we had agreed I would do in the written statement we put
together before I began my fieldwork- that proved essential in facilitating
acceptance of me in my dual roles as academic researcher and advocate at
this shelter. It was at also this shelter that, months later, staff and residents
organized a surprise birthday party for me and a small baby shower before
the birth of my son. It is to the issue of involvement in the lives of individual
shelter residents that I now turn with a second example from my fieldwork.
Midway through my fieldwork, I met Casandra, a resident at a shelter.
More importantly for the purposes of this story, I met Casandra at one of the
two shelters I had spent months trying to visit. Before she introduced me to
Casandra, the shelter director and I spoke for almost an hour about the his-
tory of the shelter and the shortage of resources that prevented the shelter
from functioning as the director envisioned it should function. I felt grateful
for the director's warm welcome and offer to sit down with me to tell me

about the shelter, particularly given the previous months of not returning my
calls. During our meeting, she suggested that I assist her in finding jobs for
the residents, and I agreed to try to do this.
When I met Casandra, she had just given birth the week before and wor-
ried that the cold air that came in through the missing window pane in her
room would make her baby sick. Casandra was twenty-six years old and her
oldest son, four years old at the time, was living with Casandra's mother in
her home community in the Amazon. Ashamed of becoming pregnant out of
wedlock for the second time, Casandra hid her most recent pregnancy from
her family. Alone in Lima, she did not know anyone to help her care for the
baby and she lacked money with which to buy clothes, medicines, and other

156 M. CRISTINA ALCALDE

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basic items. Unable to afford diapers, Casandra wrapped a piece of cloth, and
then a plastic bag, around the baby's bottom.
As I sat in a chair across from Casandra, I could feel the cold air seeping in
through the window. Casandra sat on one of the two beds in the room and
breastfed her son as we spoke. During our first conversation, she told me she
wanted to leave the shelter with her baby. She then lowered her voice to say
that she did not like the way the director treated her, quickly adding that she
did feel grateful for everything the director had given her. Casandra feared no
one would hire her as a domestic servant or restaurant worker because she

had a baby. As a woman with a newborn and no one to provide childcare

while she worked, Casandra had very little chance of finding a job.
Just three days after my conversations with the shelter director and Casan-
dra, a job opened at the shelter at which I regularly volunteered. The shelter
needed someone to spend the night at the shelter every night to accompany
with the residents. It paid very little, but it provided a private room and all
meals. All needed training would be provided on the job.
Casandra needed a job, and her personality seemed to be a good fit for this
position. I explained Casandra's situation to the staff at the shelter at which I
volunteered and asked if they would consider interviewing her for the job.
They agreed to interview her, so I called Casandra to explain the job require-
ments and to ask if she would be interested in applying. When I called the
shelter, the director answered the phone, and I excitedly explained that I
wanted to talk to Casandra because I had come across a job opening. The
shelter director did not ask for details of the job, and at that point it did not
cross my mind to mention to her that the job was at the shelter at which I vol-
unteered. Casandra met with staff members within a few days of our initial
conversation, and she was hired shortly thereafter.
Happy that things worked out the way they did, I continued with my daily
routine ofvisits, interviews, volunteer work, writing, and socializing with my
family. I also made a point of visiting Casandra's baby more often and bring-
ing him little gifts whenever I could. Almost a year after Casandra accepted
the job, things at the shelter were running as smoothly as they could and the
staffand I put together a birthday party for Casandra's son. But I am getting
ahead of myself by only accentuating the positive in this story.
Two weeks after Casandra began to work at the shelter, I received some
unexpected news. At a meeting for shelter personnel from the various shel-
ters in Lima, a fellow shelter worker overheard the shelter director from

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 Casandra's shelter angrily mention my name several times. The shelter direc-
tor complained to all of the other shelter directors (some of whom I had not
yet contacted but hoped to contact in the near future) that the (Peruvian) aca-
demic had "stolen" one of her residents and had taken her to the shelter at

which she (the academic) worked. Shocked at the news, I asked the staff
member for more information. I was being accused of stealing women from
one shelter to benefit another shelter. The fact that Casandra was no longer a
resident but now a staff member did not come up, and neither did the fact
that both the shelter director and Casandra had requested that I notify them
of job openings. Casandra's own agency- her desire to leave one shelter and
find a job, and her decision to apply for the job- never came up. The staff
member who overheard all this sympathized with me and understood my be-
wilderment at the news but, as someone who planned to work with shelters
in Lima for a long time, she could not say anything to clarify the misunder-
standing for fear that she too would be singled out by the shelter director. By
telling me about what had happened, she gave me the support she could
offer without risking her own job by challenging a higher power within the
shelter community. I felt like an outsider to the entire shelter community.
My reaction ranged from initial shock to confusion to frustration. I wasn't
sure how to feel. I felt that I had been personally attacked, and that my re-
search could suffer if other shelters decided to close their doors because they
believed I would steal women from shelters. I knew that I should immedi-

ately focus on damage control and worry about my own hurt or confused
feelings later.
As an outsider to the shelter system, and more importantly, as a middle-
class Peruvian academic, I was in no position to legitimately express frustra-
tion at shelter directors or at the possibility of unfair treatment by them. My
first step consisted of calling the shelter director to explain my version of
events and to apologize for any misunderstanding regarding my motivation
for telling Casandra about the job. I called the shelter director the same night
I found out about her reaction to Casandra's job and my involvement in the
process. I did not mention anything about the meeting she had attended ear-
lier because I did not want the staff member who informed me of the events

at the meeting to be singled out.

Our telephone conversation seemed longer than the actual time it took. I
said "I'm sorry" and "I didn't mean to ..." many, many times and toward the
end of the conversation the shelter director reminded me that I couldn't simply

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"steal" "her" women and take them to so-and-so's shelter, that was not how
things were done here, and that I should know better because I was from
Lima and was working in the shelters. I had done my best to explain what I
perceived to be the situation and felt that the only words that the shelter di-
rector accepted were "I'm sorry." It was an emotionally draining conversa-
tion for me; at issue was not only access to shelters for my research but also,
and more importantly, my personal integrity. I felt trapped in an identity
(traitor to shelters) I wanted neither as a feminist researcher nor as a Peru-
vian woman. Soon after the telephone conversation, I heard from my fellow
shelter worker that the shelter director had now spread the word that the ac-
ademic had apologized to her. This was not how I had envisioned my en-
trance into the everyday world of shelters.
Meanwhile, Casandra continued to work at the shelter and began to save
money for her son's basic needs. To support me during the week that I called
the shelter director to clarify the events and clear my name, Casandra re-
minded me that she had wanted this new job and that she did not understand
the shelter director's reaction towards me. This episode during my fieldwork
hurt me professionally and personally, but I believed that I had behaved ethi-
cally by listening to the director's request to find jobs for women and then by
directly assisting Casandra in finding a job. By calling the shelter director I
had also shown my accountability- even if in my mind I disagreed with the
director's version of events. I continued to search for jobs for women, but de-
cided to limit this practice to women at the shelter at which I volunteered.
The doors to other shelters, including the one where I met Casandra, did
open for me again eventually, but this episode left me acutely aware of my
problematic status as a white, middle-class, Peruvian academic in a world of
shelters and activism. My feminist efforts to form interpersonal relation-
ships with participants and to use resources available to me to advocate for
those women had, from the director's perspective, become the imposition of
an outsider's unearned power to take sides in a community in which I was an
academic, not a member. I can now see how the shelter director might have
interpreted the episode as a reflection of unequal class and race-based power
relationships among women in Lima, in the following manner: A young,
white, middle-class Peruvian student who lived abroad and didn't bother to
call her when she was initially searching for shelters showed up at the shelter
that she (a middle-aged, poor, Afro-Peruvian woman) had worked years to
build and infringed on her space by taking one of the residents from her shel-

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 ter to the shelter of a white, arrogant director without consulting her. Seen in
this light, the director's apparent satisfaction with announcing to others in
her close circle that the academic had apologized can be interpreted as a suc-
cessful manipulation and subversion of the usual class and race-based un-
equal power relations among women in Lima. I also view this episode as
emblematic of the problematic history of interactions and misunderstanding
between activists and academics in spite, and because, of which I needed to
continue my efforts to make legitimate my sometimes unstable and con-
tested dual roles as advocate and researcher in Lima.

Concluding Reflections

Advocacy and involvement in participants' lives when conducting extended

periods of feminist research during fieldwork can be messy and is bound to
involve conflicts. Feminist researchers often focus on marginalized commu-
nities within our own societies, and, as I have explored, listening to the mul-
tiple voices within those marginalized populations may require difficult
choices, making many relationships forged during fieldwork anything but
the feminist ideal of equal, collaborative, and reciprocal.
Differences remain between me and the women I interviewed, including
those with whom I developed longer and more meaningful relationships.
Shared national and cultural affiliation opened doors for me, but race, class,
and my status as an academic complicated my roles and made them unstable.
It was also my own privileged position vis-à-vis the women whose lives I en-
tered to do research that gave me access to resources (people with more
power, money, and information) and thus facilitated my own advocacy. As the
founder and director of the oldest shelter in Lima pointed out, the world of ev-
eryday life for battered women in shelters in Lima "is a world those on top [ac-
ademics] do not yet see." I attempted to see and understand this world, and in
doing so I broke unspoken rules, asked silly questions, privileged some voices
over others within a generally marginalized community, and had awkward
moments. Most researchers experience these moments, yet in doing research
at home one is often expected to know better than to ask certain questions and
to behave in certain ways. Doing research at home, however, also has the po-
tential to become transformative once we accept that in doing fieldwork and
beyond we will have active roles not only in analyzing and resolving conflicts,
but also in creating them, both in the short and long term.

160 M. CRISTINA ALCALDE

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 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My fieldwork and additional research trips to Lima have been funded by the Fulbright
Commission, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Indiana Univer
sity, the Department of Anthropology at Indiana University, and a Cullen Faculty De
velopment Grant at Southwestern University. Write-up of research findings was
supported by a John H. Edwards Fellowship from Indiana University and a Woodrow
Wilson Dissertation Grant in Women's Studies. I am extremely grateful to all of the
women who shared their stories with me and who allowed me to participate in their
lives. I am also very grateful to my family in Lima for giving me a home in the field an
to Gabriela Alcalde, Meridians Editor Paula Giddings, and two anonymous reviewers
for comments on an earlier draft of this piece.

NOTE

1. Some of the reasons that anthropologists have ignored domestic violence in

accounts of fieldwork include the anthropologists' fear of exploiting the ho
ity offered by the host community by exposing the "dark side" of the culture
possibility of being denied permission to return to the field after exposing exi
violence through publications; and concerns over imposing one's own foreig
litical agenda on other societies and that the results might be harmful to th
cieties (Counts, Brown, and Campbell 1999).

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