Bull sessies ter bescherming van intieme grenzen | Amsterdam University Press Journals Online
2004
Volume 22, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 1385-1535
  • E-ISSN: 1875-7324

Abstract

Bull sessions to protect intimate boundaries

Sven da Silva

During research for my MA thesis in Brazil I theorized slum politics by following a community leader. He was often bullying me. After an uncomfortable start of my fieldwork, I became interested in bull sessions, a term that describes well the development of my relationship with the community leader. Bull sessions encourage participants to speak about topics they would normally not talk about, yet participants are primarily concerned with impressing others rather that with the truth. These bull sessions guarded intimate borders. They masked a shared condition, namely that of the painful memories of being from the favela. I use this experience to make the methodological argument that – to create openness and stimulate and adventurous dialogue with informants – ethnographers should engage in bull sessions, but at the same time use their toolbox to separate performance from content. They should transparently place quotes in context for readers to make their own judgment.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.5117/2017.022.001.007
2017-03-01
2024-03-29
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journals/10.5117/2017.022.001.007
Loading
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error