“I could never be just a daughter or just an anthropologist again” (Author 2023)

researching my own mother

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss, based on ethnographic reports, the dimensions and challenges of conducting an ethnography at home with my mother-interlocutor, thus mobilizing reflections on the coexisting positionalities of research as Daughter and Anthropologist. It seeks to tension the ways of narrating and describing the life of this person; it presents contemporary debates among anthropologists who seek to promote a greater approximation of anthropology with the Other being researched; it also discusses when the “Other bodies” that are producing knowledge, specifically black and indigenous bodies, are presented. Finally, based on such reviews, it presents ethnographic reflections produced by the author of the text, as a young, black, anthropology student who finds in her life trajectory, the city of Oliveira-MG, and home of origin, in her mother a fundamental interlocutor to carry out field research with domestic workers. Thus, bringing mobilizing concerns to think about the production of an ethnography at home, which tells the story of the Other, but also the story of oneself, by seeing the mother-daughter relationship coexisting in the roles of daughter-researcher and mother-interlocutor, also enhancing dialogues about black motherhood as a safe space.