CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 372Qualitative Research Methods and EthicsAnthropology: Ethics, History, CultureFeminist Epistemology and Gender Studies

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 41 of the 43 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 31 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

Toward a Fugitive Anthropology: Gender, Race, and Violence in the Field

Open access
Berry, Maya J., Chávez Argüelles, Claudia, Cordis, Shanya, Ihmoud, Sarah, Velásquez Estrada, Elizabeth·2017·Cultural Anthropology
DOI 10.14506/ca32.4.05
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

In this essay, we point to the ways in which activist research methodologies have been complicit with the dominant logics of traditional research methods, including notions of fieldwork as a masculinist rite of passage. Paradoxically, while activist research narrates the experiences of violence enacted on racialized, gendered (queer and gendernonconforming) bodies, the complexities of doing anthropology with those same bodies have tended to be erased in the politics of the research. Thus, our analysis is twofold: we reaffirm activist anthropology’s critiques against the putatively objective character of the discipline, which effaces questions of race, gender, and class in the research process and asserts a neutral stance that replicates colonial and extractivist forms of knowledge production. At the same time, we critically examine how activist research replicates that which it critiques by not addressing the racialized, gendered researcher’s embodied experience and by presuming that rapport or intimacy with those with whom we are aligned necessarily results in more horizontal power relations. Drawing on fieldwork in El Salvador, Cuba, Palestine, Mexico, and Guyana, we examine how our gendered racial positionalities inflect the research process and consider how we can push activist methods to be accountable to the embodied aspects of conducting research in conflict zones, colonial contexts, and/or conditions of gendered and racialized terror. Ultimately, we call for a fugitive anthropology, a methodological praxis that centers an embodied feminist ethos, advancing the path toward decolonizing anthropology.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

This essay argues that activist anthropology remains complicit with masculinist, colonial, and heteropatriarchal logics by erasing the embodied racialized-gendered violence that women researchers face in the field. Drawing on five authors’ fieldwork in El Salvador, Cuba, Palestine, Mexico, and Guyana, it calls for a “fugitive anthropology” centered on embodied feminist praxis and decolonial accountability.

Key findings

  • Activist research critiques positivist objectivity but often presumes a gender-neutral researcher and horizontal rapport, thereby reproducing the power hierarchies it seeks to dismantle; the authors call for a fugitive anthropology grounded in black feminist and indigenous decolonial thought.
  • In El Salvador, after the 2012 gang truce, the national homicide rate fell from fourteen killings per day to five in the first months; the author’s access to gang peacemaking through activist methods also exposed her to patriarchal sexual expectations as a condition of continued fieldwork.
  • In Cuba, the author’s sexual assault by the boarding-house owner’s brother was met with institutional silence and racialized logic about black women’s presumed “rapeability”; in Palestine, settler-colonial terror invaded the author’s dreams and body; in Mexico, male leaders framed collaboration as courtship; in Guyana, an elder’s assault and the policing response showed how dark flesh rendered the researcher suspect.
  • The authors argue that violence against women researchers is normalized as a fieldwork risk, and that women of color, queer, and gender-nonconforming researchers must be centered in anthropological training and professional accountability.

Methods

  • Collective feminist autoethnographic essay by five self-identified black, brown, indigenous, mestiza, and/or queer cisgender women trained in U.S. decolonial and activist anthropological praxis.
  • Each author presents an ethnographic vignette from fieldwork in El Salvador, Cuba, Palestine, Mexico, and Guyana, then the group collectively develops the framework of “fugitive anthropology.”
  • Analysis is theoretical and reflexive, drawing on black feminist intersectionality, decolonial theory, and embodied experience rather than systematic data collection or comparative measurement.

Limitations

  • Stated: the authors say they do not offer prescriptive solutions and recognize contradictions, including seeking protection while analyzing structural violence and risking career or local-relationship damage.
  • Stated: reformist solutions such as working in pairs or forming emotional support networks only partially counter dangers and “mute the structural antagonisms” the authors highlight.
  • Evident from the text: the analysis rests on five authors’ personal vignettes rather than a systematic comparative study or representative sample, so it does not provide generalizable prevalence data on field violence.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.14506/ca32.4.05

Cites

41 of 41 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

0 of 31 cited sources checked · 0 supported · 0 flagged

Show all 69 claims

  • Probably not a substantial claim. 104
  • It may state two separate claims as one. 43
  • The quote only partly states this claim. 1
119 of 119

  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The field in anthropology is shaped by histories of European and U.S. imperialism and colonialism.

    “It is a physical place as well as an epistemological space of investigation shaped by histories of European and U.S. imperialism and colonialism.”

  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Fieldwork is structured by constitutive and interlocking racial and gender hierarchies and inequities.

    “The givenness of fieldwork as an individualistic rite of passage often obscures its constitutive and interlocking racial and gender hierarchies and inequities.”

  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The field in anthropology is the milieu for knowledge production.

    “The field in anthropology is the milieu for knowledge production.”

  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Some veterans had been informally mentoring their relatives, youth in gangs, in support of a gang-led peace effort.

    “In those conversations and in the company of gang members, Diego, an ex-guerrilla, told me that some veterans had been informally mentoring their relatives, youth in gangs, in support of a gang-led peace effort.”

  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The gangs' 2012 truce reduced the national homicide rate from fourteen killings per day to five in the first months.

    “Yet the gangs' 2012 truce reduced the national homicide rate from fourteen killings per day to five in the first months.”

  • The paper relies on this without support.

    After the 1992 Chapultepec Peace Accords ended twelve years of civil war, El Salvador became one of the world's most violent countries.

    “After the 1992 Chapultepec Peace Accords ended twelve years of civil war, El Salvador became one of the world's most violent countries.”

  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The state attributed violence to youth gangs and since 2003 has implemented punitive measures to end this violence, without success.

    “The state attributed this violence to youth gangs and, since 2003, has implemented punitive measures to end this violence, without success.”

  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Youth gangs are often themselves targets of state violence.

    “I answered that most alliances are built upon strategic agreements where power dynamics exist, and that youth gangs are often themselves targets of state violence.”

  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Salvadoran society socializes women and men to believe that domestic roles, such as childrearing, housekeeping, and serving men, are women's tasks, and that men should provide for and protect the family and assume roles of authority.

    “Salvadoran society socializes women and men to believe that domestic roles, such as childrearing, housekeeping, and serving men, are women's tasks, and that men should provide for and protect the family and assume roles of authority.”

  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Due to confrontations among youth gangs and between youth gangs and the state, gang members tend not to talk to outsiders and keep a tight lid on who gains access to gang-controlled territories.

    “Due to confrontations among youth gangs and between youth gangs and the state, gang members tend not to talk to outsiders and keep a tight lid on who gains access to gang-controlled territories.”

  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Most alliances are built upon strategic agreements where power dynamics exist.

    “most alliances are built upon strategic agreements where power dynamics exist”

  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The author's experience of sexual assault and its aftermath is representative of the experiences of black women anthropologists in the field.

    “I join with Davis and Queeley to argue that my very claims to relative privilege in the field were undercut by targeted exercises of power on my flesh.”

  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The reactions of the people the author confided in are indicative of a shared cultural logic about blackness and sexual violence.

    “As I confided in different people about the incident, their reactions revealed that my experience existed within a shared logic about blackness as a flesh that attracts sexual violence to itself.”

  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Black flesh is naturalized as rapeable throughout the Americas.

    “However, given the naturalized rapeability of black flesh throughout the Americas, it was my status as a foreign academic that was out of order.”

  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Activist anthropologists are expected to engage in lone acts of bravery in order to shed light on the struggles of others with less relative privilege.

    “Activist anthropologists are expected to engage in lone acts of bravery in order to shed light on the struggles of others with less relative privilege.”

  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Activist research has traditionally privileged masculine domains of the political, such as aligning oneself with a formal organization, political party, or ideology more broadly.

    “While activist research has traditionally privileged masculine domains of the political-aligning oneself with a formal organization, political party, or ideology more broadly”

  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The Mexican state has attributed the massacre to intercommunitarian violence, while simultaneously using indigenous women's bodies to repress the struggle for indigenous autonomy.

    “the Mexican state has attributed the massacre to intercommunitarian violence, while simultaneously using indigenous women's bodies to repress the struggle for indigenous autonomy.”

  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The massacre was perpetrated against this organization during the 1990s.

    “the massacre perpetrated against this organization during the 1990s”

  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Right-wing opportunists would use accounts of gendered violence to suppress revolutionary resistance.

    “without giving right-wing opportunists more leverage to suppress revolutionary resistance”

  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Heteropatriarchy is a structural force not reducible to the body, in which people of all gendered identities (un)consciously invest.

    “Heteropatriarchy is a structural force not reducible to the body, in which people of all gendered identities (un)consciously invest.”

  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The field travels within our bodies.

    “And, since the field travels within our bodies, a new language is also needed to articulate these analytical possibilities.”
21 of 21

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

Each contradiction between two passages listed here was confirmed by an independent check.

  • August 2011 to March 2012 is not nine months

    Minor

    The account dates the earlier visit to August 2011 and the later event to March 14, 2012. Those dates are about seven months apart, not nine.

1 of 1

Citations

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Show all 43 references

2 of the 43 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 5

  1. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
  2. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
  3. Collins, Patricia Hill, and Sirma Bilge 2016 Intersectionality. Malden, Mass.: Polity Press.
  4. Connell, R. W. 2005 Masculinities. 2nd edition. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  5. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 1988 "Can the Subaltern Speak?" In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 271-313. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 301–372 of 372

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Berry, M. J., Chávez Argüelles, C., Cordis, S., Ihmoud, S., & Velásquez Estrada, E.
Affiliations
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (US)
  • Spelman College (US)
  • Boston University (US)
ORCID
Venue
Cultural Anthropology
Publisher
American Anthropological Association
Published
2017-11-18
Volume
32
Issue
4
Pages
537-565
ISSN
  • 0886-7356 (ISSN-L)
  • 1548-1360
DOI
10.14506/ca32.4.05
OpenAlex
W2768285472
Cited by
372
References
43
Citations by year
2026: 51 · 2025: 59 · 2024: 75 · 2023: 62 · 2022: 41 · 2021: 30 · 2020: 25 · 2019: 25 · 2018: 4
FWCI
31.20
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by-nc
Locations
  • Cultural Anthropology (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • Carolina Digital Repository (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) (submittedVersion)
  • UNC Libraries
Funders
University of Texas at Austin
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics
  • Social Sciences › Anthropology › Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies
Keywords
activist anthropology, decolonizing anthropology, feminist research methods, researcher positionality, conflict zones, colonial knowledge production

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-11-10, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).

A second model labelled each claim on 2026-11-10 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review