How might the ethnographer
conduct research on health and suffering among populations who would rather
remain hidden? Drawing on my research with female sex workers in southern
Morocco, I suggest and demonstrate an approach that allows interlocutors'
discretionary practices to guide ethnographic inquiry. I show how boundary
work--as a politics of visibility founded on practices of discretion, concealment,
and distancing--emerged as central to my interlocutors' livelihood strategies
and their efforts to enact moral personhood, integrate themselves into networks
of solidarity, and articulate social critiques. A methodological focus on
discourses and practices of boundary drawing, I argue, was essential for
conceptualizing and representing the suffering of the women with whom I worked.
Using boundary work as a guide, the ethnographer does not give voice to
suffering, but learns how suffering is already voiced as part of attempts to
survive, aspire, and become.
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By:
- 1a Mailman School of Public Health , Columbia University , New York , USA.
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