Feminist collaboration(s) and affect: Work with pastoral women

ABSTRACT

This paper is based on an exploratory research study, “Understanding Pastoral Women's Work¹,” which attempts to make visible the embodied and lived experiences of pastoral women and their work in the Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh. In understanding the lifeworld of pastoral women, this paper delves deeper into the processes of doing research through a collaborative and feminist methodology. We have attempted to revisit questions around the complex relationship between research and activism by unpacking nuances of working closely and collaboratively with an activist from the pastoral community in the course of doing this research. In unpacking this collaboration, we have also addressed involvement of pastoral women themselves and its effect on the research process as well as on us. This paper tries to open up the question of feminist collaborative methodologies and reflects on one of the ways of practicing it.

ABSTRACT IN HINDI

यह पेपर एक खोजपूर्ण शोध, “Understanding Pastoral Women's Work” पर आधारित है। हिमाचल प्रदेश के काँगड़ा ज़िले में स्थित यह शोध घुमन्तु पशुपालक महिलाओं के काम का अंगभूत अनुभव प्रत्यक्ष लाने की कोशिश करता है। यह पेपर घुमन्तु पशुपालक महिलाओ का जीवन समझने के लिए सहयोगात्मक और नारीवादी प्रणाली की गहराई में जाता है। शोध और सक्रियतावाद के मुश्किल प्रश्न को फिर से समझने का कार्य हमने एक स्थानिय सक्रीतावादी के साथ मिलके किया है। इस साझेदारी की बारीकियाँ हमको शोध और सक्रियतावाद के रिश्ते को फिर से देखने का एक नजरिया देती है। इस साझेदारी को और बारीकी से समझने के लिए हमने घुमंतू पशुपालक महिलाओं के इस शोध पर और हम पर हुए असर को भी संबोधित किया है। यह पेपर अतः नारीवादी सहयोगतम्क प्रणाली के सवालों पर विचार करने की एक कोशिश है और इनको कैसे अपने शोध में अभ्यास क्रिया के तौर पर लाया जाए उसपे एक चिंतन है।

KEYWORDS:

• Pastoralism
• women’s work
• collaboration
• research
• feminist methodology
• activism

KEYWORDS:

• पशुपालन; महिलाओं का काम
• सहयोग
• अनुसंधान
• नारीवादी शोधप्रणाली
• सक्रियतावाद

Acknowledgements

We are deeply grateful to Pawna Kumari and Ghumantu Pashupalak Mahasabha for collaborating with us and constantly engaging with us, which made this research what it is now.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See Kaur et al. (2022).

2 Although the word “subject” shows hierarchy, it has been used in this context to refer to social and natural science discourses that have propagated in the earlier understandings of research.

3 Pawna Kumari works with the “Ghumantu Pashupalak Mahasabha” (Association of Nomadic Pastoralists), which works for rights of nomadic cattle-sheep herding communities in Himachal Pradesh.

4 “Phenomenology offered an ‘attitude’ or orientation of paying attention to the world as lived and experienced, and this attitude offered the basis for an epistemology, theoretical perspective, methodology, method, or a combination of these (Allen-Collinson, 2011). Within phenomenological writing, the work of de Beauvoir (1949/1972, 1949/2010) and Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962, 1964a, 1960/1964b) were particularly relevant in offering gendered and situated understandings of lived experience” (Barbour, 2018, p. 215). Remembering this feminist history is important in processes of research to continue to remind ourselves of the embodied and contextual ways of “knowing” and to attend to experience as situated.

5 While women have most of the money with them as men travel to places which might not be conducive to roam around with money, they do not enjoy an autonomy to spend the money as they would want.

6 The idea behind doing the body mapping activity was primarily to understand their relationship to their bodies in an in-depth way, the points of pain and pleasure, how they perceive, see, relate to a body that not only labors but also has an intimate, relational connection with the world.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gurpreet Kaur

Gurpreet KAUR is an independent researcher currently. She has worked at Institute of Social Studies Trust previously, where she has co-led and completed a research study on “Understanding pastoral women's work.” She has worked in the areas of feminist research, gender and development, collectivization, and ecology. She works closely with feminist methodologies within communities in different settings and holds interest in writing through affect, narratives on body and queer-ness. She holds a MPhil degree in Women and Gender Studies.

Prateek

PRATEEK is an independent Researcher working around the themes of gender, ecology, and collective action. They have worked previously with Institute of Social Studies Trust where they co-led the research title Understanding Pastoral Women's Work. Their research interests include working with feminist and queer methodologies, collective action, indigenous food cultures, and participatory research.

Saee Pawar

Saee PAWAR is a research consultant at Institute of Social Studies Trust (ISST). She holds a master’s degree in Sociology from Savitribai Phule Pune University. At ISST, she has completed the studies like “Understanding Pastoral Women's Work: An exploratory study,” “Unpacking Work and Identity of Women Farmers: Role of Collectivization,” and “Curriculum on Women and Work second iteration.” Saee is an interdisciplinary qualitative researcher with interests in Social Anthropology, Gender studies, Migration studies, Sociolinguistics, and Translation studies.