Abstract

ABELENDA, Ana. Working with intimacy and empathy: Ethical reflections on anthropological research on gender and care during the pandemic. Rev. urug. Antropología y Etnografía [online]. 2022, vol.7, n.1, pp.63-76.  Epub June 01, 2022. ISSN 2393-7068.  https://doi.org/10.29112/ruae.v7i1.1539.

The present article is written against the backdrop of a field research conducted between 2020 and 2021 on care strategies deployed by families in the city of Montevideo in a context marked by the ups and downs of the COVID-19 pandemic and the aggravated care crisis that resulted from the closure of kindergartens, daycares and schools for several months during this period. I set out to investigate what ideas and narratives about the role of the family in care work underlie these strategies. As part of this work, I built relationships of friendship and trust with my research subjects, where empathy and emotionality were always present as a gateway to shared intimacy in a context of particular collective crisis. Throughout the text, I reflect on a few ethical dimensions that emerged. Firstly, the particular implication as a researcher with my object of study and my place of enunciation also marked by feminist activism that did not match a position of external “observer”. Secondly, the tensions of sharing personal and sensitive information gathered thanks to years of friendly relationships and mutual trust. And thirdly, the article touches on some ethical-methodological questions that arise: How to work with sensitive data following my own ethical principles? In what ways does anonymity make sense in this case?

Keywords : gender; care; covid-19 pandemic; research ethics; anonymity; intimacy.

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