Predicaments of Power: Trust-Based Sexualized Violence in Ethnographic Fieldwork

Establishing trust with research participants is an indispensable part of ethnographic fieldwork. Accounts of sexualized violence in the field, however, show that in some cases such trust relations can also influence situational power dynamics in the field and pose a risk to researchers. In this chapter, I am analysing an act of rape and a further sexual assault I experienced at the hands of two trusted participants during a three-month research project in Niger. I propose a way to closely engage with situational power shifts in the field by examining different underlying processes of establishing trust, assembling capital(s) of power, and exercising violence and resistance. I further explain how established yet problematic tropes and methodology in ethnographic research can facilitate the occurrence of trust-based sexualized violence in fieldwork contexts.