This taxi does not go to Zamalek
Everyday encounters as a way of exploring female non-white researcher vulnerability
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54807/kp.v33.2488Keywords:
encounters, researcher's position, fieldwork, Blackness, intersectionalityAbstract
This article addresses encounters as “everyday exchanges across difference” with regards to researcher experience, focusing on the Egyptian context. Drawing on three examples from encounters I had during my own fieldwork in Cairo, I show how even brief exchanges with strangers may destabilise the often takenfor-granted idea of the position of the researcher in the field as always occupying a position of power. Indeed, being marked as female and coded as African in the Egyptian context placed me in a situation where complex systems governing Egyptian and Sudanese gender roles were at play, sometimes corresponding with the dangers pinned to Black bodies. I use these encounters to show the ways in which all involved in an encounter have varying degrees of power based upon intersectional factors.
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