Mumbai Slums and the Search for ‘A Heart’: Ethics, Ethnography and Dilemmas of Studying Urban Violence
Author(s)
Sen, Atreyee
Abstract
In this article, the author explores some of the methodological problems faced by anthropologists when they conduct fieldwork in volatile ethnographic settings. The author’s own fieldwork was based in the slums of Mumbai, one of the commercial capitals of India, where working-class women had allied themselves with a violent, Hindu nationalist movement. The ‘fundamentalist’ women, who had organised themselves into a militant, semi-religious task force, played a vital role in orchestrating urban riots. While living and working with these women, the author found herself a helpless, often frightened bystander to various forms of factional ‘war’. Would, should, could she prevent this overt use of violence and threats? That was always her primary dilemma. The eerie spectre of ethics continued to haunt her work during the writing-up stage, even though the author was far, far away from his killing fields. In this article, the author tries to highlight and address some of the dilemmas of studying urban conflict, in a bid to emotionally equip future research scholars studying the anthropology of violence.
