Book: "Studying Intimate Matters"

Engaging Methodological Challenges in Studies of Gender, Sexuality and Reproductive Health in sub-Saharan Africa

Edited by Barbara Ann Barret and Christian Groes-Green

Fountain Publishers Kampala, 2011. ISBN 978-9970-02-999-0

Chapter 1 by Christian Groes-Green, Barbara Ann Barrett & Chimaraoke Izugbara: "Introduction: Intimate Studies and Ethnographic Sensitivity" 

Chapter 4 by Christian Groes-Green: "Intimate Ethnography: Trust-building, Transgression and Sexual Cultures among Mocambican Youth"

Chapter 6 by postdoc Bjarke Oxlund: "Let's talk about sex: Comparing notes from qualitative research on men, relationships, and sex in South Africa and Rwanda."

Chapter 7 by Margrethe Silberschmidt: "intimate Matters as Taboo or a Burning Issue: Experiences from Qualitative Data Collection in Urban Uganda and Tanzania"

People's reproductive choices, sexual practices and domestic affairs very often become questions of life and death, suffering or fulfilment. With the increasing complexities of the social dynamics that shape the lives of women and men in Africa, there is a need to refine the procedures and instruments of investigation into the fields of sexuality, gender and reproduction. This book engages the methodological challenges that researchers face when they address highly intimate, taboo-ridden and controversial issues. These issues are always subject to negotiation and contestation, secrecy and revelation. The collection of articles in this book discusses such challenges and suggests how to overcome them in order to develop methods that aptly address intimate and sensitive matters without neglecting informants' need for privacy and rights to confidentiality.