“Our Γερόντισσα?” : fieldwork experiences from Turkey to Northern Greece

Abstract

I conduct a research titled “The Invisible Labor of the Church: Orthodox and Catholic Nuns in Turkey” for a long time. In this article I am going to be sharing some of my fieldwork experiences in an Orthodox women’s monastery in Northern Greece, which I visit regarding to the ethnographic study I am conducting. Since it has become part of my life both for my study and because of staying in the monastery with the nuns from time to time, my visits are still continuing. However, so far, in nine months, I have been to the monastery four times -in July, September, December 2023 and March 2024- and stayed there with the nuns for about over a month. Each of my visits to the monastery has, of course, created many unique experiences that cannot be fit in this small space this article has. In addition, what I am going to evaluating as a field grade is also, for sure, quite variable. That’s why, I am going to describe my travels from the day I was invited to the monastery until now, trying to focus on the most prominent ones. As someone who has been to a women’s monastery to stay before, I will try to talk about what I felt when I went there, what I could and/or could not tell others about how it made me feel, what topics I think have changed and the emotional bond that has developed between me and the nuns over time. With that, I am going to share how I started to get used to the monastery as I continued visiting, which I left almost fleeing because of the claustrophobic feelings I felt the first time I visited. Thus, with a feminist, anti-positivist approach, it needs to be accepted that it is inevitable for an anthropologist conducting fieldwork ‘from the bottom up’ to change during the research process.

Keywords

• women's monastery
• Orthodox nuns
• Northern Greece
• feminist anthropological field work
• transformation of the researcher

References

1. Atay T. (2018) Sunu. In: Harmanşah R, Nahya ZN, editors. Etnografik hikâyeler: Türkiye’de alan araştırması deneyimleri. İstanbul: Metis Yayınları, p 9-15.
2. Byers E. S. (1996) How well does the traditional sexual script explain sexual coercion? Review of a program of research. J Psychol Human Sex 8:7-25.
3. Çeltikci M. (2022) Sahanın arka planı: Feminist bir antropolog olarak Türkiye’de Güneydoğu Asyalı kadınlar üzerine araştırma yapmak. (https://catlakzemin.com/sahanin-arka-plani-feminist-bir-antropolog-olarak-turkiyede-guneydogu-asyali-kadinlar-uzerine-arastirma-yapmak/), Date of accessed: January 21, 2024.
4. Çeltikci M. (2023) “Sen de mi rahibe olacaksın?”: sahanın yansıması. Fe Dergi 15(1):258-278.
5. Ergül H. (2013) Sunuş. In: Ergül, H, editor. Sahanın sesleri: iletişim araştırmalarında etnografik yöntem. İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları, p 1-13.
6. Malinowski B. (1932) Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London: George Routledge.
7. Marcus G, Fischer M. (1986) Anthropology as cultural critique: an experimental moment in the human sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
8. Yazıcı Yakın A. (2019) Sunuş: Alelade şeyleri anlatmak. In: Yazıcı Yakın A, Kükrer M, editors. Etnografi: olağan-içi tecrübe. Ankara: Doğubatı, p 7-30.