M. Strathern's paradox of the feminist anthropologist fieldworker and solutions


Author: Doctor Terence Rajivan Edward (or 0161__Rajivan, if that helps)
Date: 4 June 2026 (Draft 7. From draft 6, references added to solutions 1 and 5, solution 6 significantly updated, solution 13 updated, reference list updated, further reading added; draft 2 2nd November 2023, draft 1 October 23?)
Note: there are 2 solutions I read before 2012, on uk.jstor.org, which I was not able to find when gathering material for this document in the next decade.


The paradox. The paradox starts from these propositions, regarding a female feminist doing anthropology fieldwork: (a) as an anthropologist she is committed to interacting with males in the society, in order to properly describe it; (b) as a feminist she is committed to not interacting with males, the source of oppression for feminists. The solutions below are not in chronological order and the list may not be complete. (Many I devised myself, with some inspiration from my reading!)


1. The stages solution. This is suggested by old-fashioned evolutionism. There are stages in the development of society and of feminism and whether one should have the commitment in (b) within a society depends on the stage it is in. At a certain stage, deals with businessmen, political party leaders who are male, etc., are worthwhile for feminists. (Influenced by reading Purvis 2018). 


2. The low bar solution. J.G. Frazer thinks it is rational for various tribes to kill the anthropologist, to protect against disease. If you "set" the bar low, they are often being good to you, including their males, contrary to (b).


3. Other feminisms (old-fashioned kind). Some feminists may reject (b) as based on a specific and less defensible feminism: radical feminism. I presented an old-fashioned rival, which says that some males are feminine in sensibility and are not a source of oppression for women: they can interact with these males. But how then to know parts of a society beyond its feminine parts?


4. The postmodern solution. This is the most popular solution in the literature, developed first by Kamala Visweswaran and also adopted by Janet Boddy. It says that the depiction of feminist commitments in (b) is based on one specific variety of feminism, namely radical feminism, when postmodern feminism is more defensible. Visweswaran argues that whether a fieldworker counts as a man or not depends on how she is treated in the society she is in, and when doing fieldwork in some societies she may be treated as an honorary male. She can interact with males then. (But what if she is not treated as such?)


5. The female-only solution. Social and cultural anthropology are associated with fieldwork in small societies often regarded as primitive. Social anthropology was once defined as the study of primitive societies. But its method of immersion in the way of life of a group tends to define it these days.  In modern complex societies, there is sometimes the option of doing fieldwork amongst an all female group (see Green 1997, radical and revolutionary lesbian feminists in London). But there is a question of whether even some promising cases require more information about males, e.g. family members. (Green's lesbian feminists had often run away from their families, but the promise of this solution in an Islamic context is surely different. Note: I have been influenced by a reference to Strathern I found in 2023, to be provided later hopefully.)


6. The Hume-Popperian solution. This solution argues that the commitment in (b) derives from a generalization from limited evidence: male 1 was oppressive, male 2 was, male 3 was... One cannot establish the proposition that all males oppress all females on the basis of this inductive reasoning, because inductive reasoning is not a source knowledge. The proposition is something to repeatedly test.


Furthermore - this should probably be a separate solution, not requiring skepticism about inductive reasoning as ever a source of knowledge - the generalization is based on data specifically from Western societies and so one must inquire into whether it applies elsewhere. (Also note that socialist feminist anthropologists regard patriarchal traditions as the source of oppression but they don't assume that all non-Western societies have them. See Ong 1988.)


7. The all-things-considered solution. The aim of feminism is to reduce the oppression of female human beings. Whether feminism requires avoiding interaction with males depends on whether interaction overall hinders the achievement of this aim, all things considered. This is surely to be decided on a case-by-case basis. There is no reason to think it is always more of a hindrance than a help, contrary to (b). See Edward 2020 and 2023d.


8. The inferential solution. This solution rejects (a) and says that the anthropologist who mixes only with females in the society under study can infer what she needs to about males. There are doubts about whether this is true, and anyway anthropology promotes itself on actual interaction with the people described. This solution is perhaps encouraged by some people who are not academic anthropologists. Regarding a project in Suau, Papua New Guinea, Sophie Pascoe and Monica Minnegal tell us, "This man objected to the project on the basis that he was a landowner for the area but had been excluded from negotiations and from receiving benefits as he was not currently living in the village. In subsequent discussions, staff from the United Kingdom dismissed his statements because he was a man and, therefore, assumed not to play a role within the local matrilineal land tenure system." (2023: 294) Note the "therefore." (The observation of a connection was made in a paper which I later deleted, after hospitalization.)


9. The other fieldworker solution. This solution also rejects (a). The feminist anthropologist does not have to do fieldwork with males in the society under study if she can get another fieldworker to. But if that fieldworker is a woman, she does not get to be a good feminist, while getting a male seems against the spirit of the commitment to non-cooperation in (b).


10. The high "visibility" solution. A male culture may be so visible, one does not need to interact much with members to know a lot about it. Its rituals fill the streets yearly say, as with the Coconutters of Bacup (Edwards 2000).


11. The weighted value solution. Imagine a female student choosing between male and female supervisors. Instead of being a radical feminist ("Avoid interaction with males"), she might use a weighted system of evaluation: for every 1 point of value for her in the female supervisor's book, the male's book needs 7 points, for example. And she might continue with this solution as a fieldworker studying natives. But in the field, she does not normally have texts in advance to give a weighted score in terms of points. She may make an intuitive assessment?


12. Radical feminism varieties solution. Strathern's paradox is generally regarded as depending on radical feminism: the radical feminist says that a female should avoid interaction with males. But we can distinguish two types who recommend this: one who says that males by their nature oppress females, when there is interaction; the other who says that there may be exceptions but it is too much labour to do anything but work with a simple prohibition. Regarding this second type, we can further distinguish between one who says that the exceptions are likely to be more in countries with large populations and one who does not. But given that anthropologists often conduct fieldwork in societies small in number, the second of these second types at least has grounds to relax the rule that finding exceptions is too much labour. (Not sure about this, but seems worth presenting.)


13. Half-done anthropology? The philosopher Joseph Raz writes, "apart from the two extremes of full or no compliance there are usually possibilities of partial compliance. If I owe you $100 and I give you $60 I do less than I ought to have done, but more than nothing. It would have been better had I given you $100, but worse had I given you nothing." Similarly, a solution to Strathern's paradox is for some feminists to do anthropology fieldwork which is entirely woman-focused: it is better for anthropology than nothing, although it does not fully meet anthropology's requirements. (There is/are a high proposition of women anthropologists but to stay so feminism-influenced, it probably needs all the feminist fieldwork it can get.) 


References
Boddy, Janice. 1991. Anthropology, Feminism, and the Postmodern Context. Culture 11 (1-2): 125-133.  Available at:
https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/culture/1991-v11-n1-2-culture06609/1084480ar.pdf
Edwards, Jeanette. 2000. Born and Bred: . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2020 (revised version of 2012). Feminist research and paradigm shift in anthropology. Available at PhilPapers at: https://philarchive.org/archive/EDWFRA-2
Original published version:
Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2012. Feminist research and paradigm shift in anthropology. Meta: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy 4(2): 343-362. Available at:  https://www.metajournal.org//articles_pdf/343-362-edward-meta8-tehno--r1.pdf
Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2023a. The other fieldworker solution to the problem of feminist anthropologist fieldwork. Available at Researchgate at:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370600001_The_other_fieldworker_solution_to_the_problem_of_feminist_anthropologist_fieldwork
Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2023b. On a solution from Laura Riding to the feminist anthropologist fieldworker paradox. Available at academia.edu
Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2023c. Hot Jupiters and the problem of the feminist anthropologist fieldworker. Available at Researchgate at:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370902808_Hot_Jupiters_and_the_problem_of_the_feminist_anthropologist_fieldworker
Frazer, J.G. 1894. The golden bough. A study in comparative religion. Volume 1. New York: Macmillan and Company.
Green, Sarah F. 1997. Urban Amazons. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Ong, Aiwha. 1988. Colonialism and Modernity: Feminist Re-Presentations of Women in Non-Western Societies. Inscriptions 3/4: 79-93.
Pascoe, Sarah, and Minnegal, Monica. 2023. Paying attention to pigs: negotiating equity and equality in global environmental governance in Suau, Papua New Guinea. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 29 (2): 286-305. Available at:
https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-9655.13913
Purvis, June. 2018. Christabel Pankhurst: A Biography. London: Routledge. 
Raz, Joseph. 2003. Numbers, with and without contractualism. Ratio 16 (4):346–367. Available at: 
https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/46633948/Numbers_With_and_Without_Contractualism-libre.pdf?1466402128=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DNUMBERS_WITH_AND_WITHOUT_CONTRACTUALISM.pdf&Expires=1780591171&Signature=PgJevhf7M7MP~8biDcZHxMw8DYCHrUcx0KCGxISxJR0VN0XKbGmsbAX4NNbVMP3Jgpbpw2o8DdC0f3K~BnI6cn1J2i4szRVCaqozZ9vPfnJtRok5P9aNq0p4Ka~PZtlf~adrydBsOArIAMXmcm7M88uXZF9nntouU77Uy9NjOJj4Gp9UcykuVNhFxPra2uySWQMOqQqMKMRMjl1Wy4R06a3vnjRSclpeAHpvpOfKOmIhg7ygbPlCKnxfaTNcGuKxH4c3WcmF~O5RsS~hx9SoS~lfci-ZkBKZRSECd9vt6b2iMOu6vnkYOpARjR0GbTF2YhJ5kr~UXNBs~jjkYYHX0A__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA
Strathern, Marilyn. 1987. An Awkward Relationship: the Case of Feminism and Anthropology. Signs 12: 276-292. Available at:
https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/74331270/9a7cfffd7761eee847fcdfd1effe3058db0f-libre.pdf?1636324719=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DAn_Awkward_Relationship_The_Case_of_Femi.pdf&Expires=1780591223&Signature=RM~KNyWbXuCSwaEAsEbAvZvlvuyA-Z-u6OB7kJKcJRW2KHgomNk9H~6bg8JIqFnPRbP~YdyPPf8~BhOy9UqI2tLsagkoxARdmvFqEWg-keqEfAyaTlT4WytWxRfYcAdlMoMFh1zD5V23TtkB3wAwDWjvldd3nLH30DU7UmH8DSoA~GWTDWGNmw7fIvV2p~O7J0NWNyFoW7sKnl5Z7OyYqIM5Z7fHSMDSu3pJYD5GrMFHi-4f2FB0osQylESsREviIL4EpMwMOXxsXJZQV-H-fER5harkEnHLmAYEQX4oytbUB5j36uv3dzIJGEWISrwJ5u3qbTGdkYfxIvxuZk862A__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA
Visweswaran, Kamala. 1988. Defining Feminist Ethnography. Inscriptions 3/4: 27-44.
[Probably I need to add L. Abu-Lughod to this list. The references reflect my training in social anthropology at the University of Manchester?]


Further reading (from me)
Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2022a. "What is the difference between your response to Marilyn Strathern on feminist anthropology and Patricia Uberoi’s response?" Available at:
https://philpapers.org/archive/EDWWIT-4.pdf
Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2022b. "What is the difference between your response to Marilyn Strathern on feminist anthropology and Janaki Nair's response?" Used to be available on PhilPapers; I doubt I requested deletion. Available now at:
https://website2.net/strathern_femnair.txt 
Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2022c. "What is the difference between your response to Marilyn Strathern on feminist anthropology and Victoria Loblay's response." Available at PhilPapers at:
https://philarchive.org/archive/EDWWIT-7
Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2022d. Why did Frazer not do fieldwork? Available at PhilPapers at:
https://philpapers.org/archive/EDWWDF.pdf
Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2022d. Bringing back Frazer, avoiding the charge of relativism. Available at: https://philpapers.org/archive/EDWBBF.pdf
Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2023d (first version 2022). "What is the difference between your objection to Marilyn Strathern on feminist anthropology and Kamala Visweswaran’s objection?" Available at:
https://philpapers.org/archive/EDWWIT-2.pdf
And:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Terence-Edward/publication/360160821_What_is_the_difference_between_your_objection_to_Marilyn_Strathern_on_feminist_anthropology_and_Kamala_Visweswaran's_objection/links/64693e9870202663165ce875/What-is-the-difference-between-your-objection-to-Marilyn-Strathern-on-feminist-anthropology-and-Kamala-Visweswarans-objection.pdf
(Note: this text refers to Lila Abu-Lughod and R.J. Wallis as suggesting solution 7.)
Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2026. An inconsistency in Marilyn Strathern's philosophy of fieldwork. Available at: https://philpapers.org/rec/EDWAQI-2