The Trouble with Fieldwork: Queering Methodologies

Abstract

This chapter concerns how ethnography is being employed as a research method in queer studies. Drawing on anthropological work on sexuality and new approaches to methodology. The chapter focuses on how fieldwork and ethnography are being conceptualised in queer studies. The chapter examines some of the methodological problems associated with carrying out ethnographic research, in connection to Michael Connors Jackman’s work with gay and queer artists in Atlantic Canada. The chapter discusses how the boundaries of field sites interact with the erotic subjectivities of researchers and informants. In a recent issue of the Graduate Journal of Social Science (GJSS) devoted to queer studies and methodological approaches, Tiina Rosenberg offers a critical overview of the usage of ‘queer’ in academic debates in Sweden since the emergence of ‘queer theory’ in the early 1990s. A common response to literary and cultural studies of sexuality by those who focus on informant-based research is to disregard the studies in favour of quantitative and empirical work.