Feminist Ethnography in Education and the Challenges of Conducting Fieldwork: Critically Examining Reciprocity and Relationships between Academic and Public Interests1

INTRODUCTION This paper presents a critical analysis of ideas and formulations traditionally organized under the broad theoretical umbrella identified as feminist “critical ethnography.” Various authors have proposed critical ethnography as a way to respond to the crisis of representation posed by post-structuralism. In particular, many authors have problematized the unequal relations established between researchers and research participants in the field. Many authors have also seen this problematization as a way to help “liberate” oppressed and minority people and as a path leading to “breaking” the pattern of unequal power relations favoring the researcher in relation to the research participant. In line with Foucault’s ideas, I argue that while the challenge to open up possibilities for less unequal relations between research and research participants requires action, the critical ethnographers offer rhetoric. I reflect on these issues by presenting cases of ethnographers—including myself—that seem to illustrate the challenges faced currently by ethnographic studies in education and by analyzing other key issues currently at play in the ethnography of education. This paper has three main sections. In the first section, I will present and analyze briefly three cases of ethnographies that illustrate the tensions currently at play in the field. In the second section, I will introduce theoretical notions informed by Foucaultian propositions that illuminate problems and potential strategies to deal with the tensions indicated in the first section. In the third section, I will demonstrate how I dealt with these issues and the limitations of my own work as an ethnographer conducting fieldwork in Brazil.