This collection of essays draws together Elaine Lawless’s key writings on the subject of
reciprocal ethnography, a collaborative approach to ethnography in which researchers
share their analyses and interpretations with participants in the study, and conclusions
“emerge from the discourse between and among all the participants, ethnographer
included” (98).
In the book’s introduction, Lawless describes how she came to formulate the idea of
reciprocal ethnography as a feminist, radically collaborative response to the reflexive
turn in ethnographic writing, and she lays out her interests in women’s speech and
narrative, which she began to develop in graduate school at Indiana University: “Even
then, I knew I wanted to pay attention to what women had to say. Aligned with that
desire to listen to and actually ‘hear’ women’s words was my deep-seated anger that
women were consistently, horribly silenced in our culture, as well as many cultures
around the world. My immediate research question then emerged: how, when, and where
The first three chapters cover Lawless’s early work with rural white Pentecostal women. Chapter 1, “Shouting for the Lord: The Power of Women’s Speech in the Pentecostal Religious Service,” focuses on the cultural constrictions placed on women in the Pentecostal community, and explores how and when women are allowed to speak. Lawless identifies preaching and testifying as two major avenues for women’s speech in the church, analyzing their content and the style in which they are delivered. She finds that women are most able to gain control of the congregation through testifying, which they do in a style that is similar to how Pentecostal men preach, and argues that the testimonies provide the women with an opportunity to speak to one another about the difficulties they face in their daily lives.
Chapter 2 shifts the focus from women’s speech within the Pentecostal church service to what Lawless calls the “spiritual life stories” of Pentecostal women preachers, specifically their narratives about being called to preach. Considering the work of feminist scholars on women’s life writing, Lawless acknowledges the constructed nature of the life story, weighing the potentially liberating aspects of these narratives against their restrictive tendency to force women’s experiences into pre-established patterns. The third chapter focuses on the rhetorical strategies that make it possible for women pastors to hold positions of authority within a strictly patriarchal community. Lawless finds that the women lean into their roles as wives and mothers, emphasizing both toughness and femininity in their sermons.
Chapter 4 is a hinge moment in the collection, connecting Lawless’s earlier work with her
later focus on reciprocal ethnography. Here she explains how a serious disagreement of
interpretation with a Pentecostal pastor, Sister Anna, led her to reflect on the
importance of finding a new, more collaborative approach to ethnography that would
provide space for the input of both researchers and participants. Lawless describes how
she applied these concerns to her next ethnographic project, the work with women in
ministry that would become the 1993 monograph
Chapter 5 continues to develop these ideas, providing readers with a considerable amount of detail about the fieldwork process involved in doing reciprocal ethnography. This chapter provides some of the most helpful guidance for researchers interested in adapting her methodology in their own work. Throughout the chapter, Lawless demonstrates the usefulness of this approach in gaining a deeper understanding of one’s subject matter, in this case the life stories and storytelling strategies of women in ministry. Lawless includes dialogue from the women, illustrating how they struggle to tell the stories of their lives in ways that feel complete and accurate within the confines of masculine narrative conventions. By presenting this discussion as it takes shape rather than distilling its essence for the reader after the fact, Lawless demonstrates how reciprocal ethnography can work within the conventions of academic writing while simultaneously reshaping them.
The next two chapters pivot from a focus on the content and style of women’s stories to the narratives and rhetoric surrounding their bodies. Chapter 6 interrogates the femininst concept of “writing the body” in the context of what a woman’s body in the pulpit signifies, both from the objective point of view of the congregation watching, and from the subjective point of view of the woman preaching. The voices and thoughts of the ministers Lawless worked with are threaded through the text, making it possible for the reader to catch a glimpse of their sense of themselves, both as ministers and as women:
“And, finally, Anne-Marie said, “So what we’re doing is calling—is bringing the emphasis back not just to sexuality or on being women but bringing back that it’s the person that’s holy, and the person is whole, and the person has a story, and the story matters enough that you just don’t put it in the back and extrapolate out of it to make generalizations. And so that wholeness has to do with the value of a person.” (151)
This concept of each person having a story with worth, one that is tied to their physical body and the life experiences they have attempted to thread together into a cohesive whole, is one of the guiding principles of the book, and serves as the ideological framework of its last chapter. This chapter focuses on the ways in which the most common interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve from the book of Genesis has often been used as a justification for violence against women, as well as on the narratives of women living in a shelter for survivors of domestic abuse. It underlines the importance of creating spaces for women to relate their experiences in whatever way they choose. Lawless argues that survivors are able to remake themselves in the moment of narration. Sitting down to tell their stories becomes an act of self-creation and resistance against a cultural worldview that often conceives of women as responsible for the abuse they experience. This chapter also explores how the body can be read in a number of different ways, with the evidence of the violence inflicted on women’s bodies being interpreted differently by the women themselves and the government institutions they turn to for help.
In the author’s note accompanying this chapter, Lawless acknowledges that utilizing the methods of reciprocal ethnography, particularly the act of sharing written interpretations with participants in order to incorporate their reactions within the final published text, was difficult in this context, as many of the women were focused on putting their lives in order and finding a permanent place to live. But she was still able to bring the principles of reciprocal ethnography into the project with modifications: “Verbally, they were able to respond to what I was thinking and writing and often interjected their own opinions about these aspects of the research. At times they were eager to agree with what I was saying, and sometimes they were quick to tell me how I was wrong or was missing some aspect they felt was important” (153).
While there are detailed descriptions of the process of doing reciprocal ethnography throughout the book, a chapter devoted solely to methodology and the potential challenges that can arise when doing this kind of work would be a useful addition, particularly for social scientists in fields outside of folklore looking to adapt a reciprocal approach in their own projects. A conclusion summing up the common themes of the essays would also be a welcome addition to this collection. These are minor complaints, boiling down to a desire to continue to inhabit the world of Lawless’s ideas. It is uncommon to read an academic text from cover to cover, including each foot and endnote, and at the end to wish it were longer, but Lawless’s insights into the nature of narrative and its potential to simultaneously limit and enrich women’s lives, as well as her meditations on the appropriate role of the researcher in an ethnographic practice that strives to treat people with respect, are beautifully written and deeply compelling.
Drawing on a wide variety of sources from folklore, feminist and gender studies, literary studies, and others, Lawless explores the content and style of various forms of women’s narratives, as well as the performance of these narratives and the important role of the act of storytelling in the effort to shape a coherent identity. This multifaceted approach makes it clear that narrative is deeply intertwined with both the social world and the physical body in a number of different ways, some symbolic, others concrete. Throughout this collection, the author demonstrates the ways that reciprocal ethnography can provide a more nuanced understanding of these connections. As Amy Shuman notes in the foreword, “in an age of ‘fake news,’... Lawless’s book locates truth in dialogue, even when the dialogue produces uncomfortable differences in interpretation” (x). This process of locating the truth in dialogue makes connection possible even in instances of profound disagreement, and Lawless’s work in reciprocal ethnography provides a much needed blueprint for how to proceed in such situations. During this moment when so much of American discourse appears hopelessly polarized, Lawless’s work, with its emphasis on respectful listening, offers a path towards more fruitful communication.
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[Review length: 1624 words • Review posted on April 23, 2020]