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Where the dust settles : fieldwork, subjectivity and materiality in Cairo
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Nassar, Aya (2018) Where the dust settles : fieldwork, subjectivity and materiality in Cairo. Contemporary Social Science , 13 (3-4). pp. 412-428. doi:10.1080/21582041.2017.1418521 ISSN 2158-2041.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21582041.2017.1418521
Abstract
This article uses the very materiality of the city, namely its dust, to reflect on the processes of researching and writing about it. By using ‘dust’ as both a material and an imaginative metaphor that assembles architecture, urban space, archives and history, I argue that field environments, in a very material sense, seep through our fieldwork methodologies. Written through a series of four vignettes; this article reflects on conducting archival fieldwork in urban space, as a non-risky methodology, yet within a politically turbulent context where research in itself could be a cause of risk. By acknowledging the very materiality of the field environment, a space is created to reflect on how the field constitutes our subjectivity as researchers, in the city, the archive, or elsewhere. Attention to dust allows us to write with – rather than against – the entanglement of field notes. It makes space for an autobiographic incision and reclaims a subjective voice that writing on being in the field needs. Furthermore, it allows us to trouble the clean and disentangled constructions of our subjectivity as academic knowing subjects through the orchestrated everyday practices of conducting fieldwork.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||||
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Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DT Africa J Political Science > JA Political science (General) |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Politics and International Studies | ||||||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Political science -- fieldwork -- Cairo (Egypt), Egypt -- History -- Protests, 2011- | ||||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Contemporary Social Science | ||||||||||
Publisher: | Routledge | ||||||||||
ISSN: | 2158-2041 | ||||||||||
Official Date: | 2018 | ||||||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 13 | ||||||||||
Number: | 3-4 | ||||||||||
Page Range: | pp. 412-428 | ||||||||||
DOI: | 10.1080/21582041.2017.1418521 | ||||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 22 January 2018 | ||||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 22 June 2019 |
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