On being a ‘passive observer’: The corporeal and affective dimensions of power in observational research on trafficked women in criminal proceedings

Abstract

In this article, I analyse the methodological issues that arise when I accept a judge's invitation to observe her hear women testify in criminal proceedings against their traffickers at the district courthouse in X, Germany. I develop a theoretical framework using Pierre Bourdieu's theory of embodied power and his methods of epistemic reflexivity and participant objectivation, and feminist engagements with affect theory. I use my fieldwork experience with a judicial gatekeeper and in conducting ethnographic observational research ‘behind the scenes of formal law’ to interrogate how bodies, emotions and affects inform power in the spaces of criminal law. Specifically, I approach bodies, emotions and affects as conceptual tools with which to interrogate how power transmits when I ‘enter’ and ‘read’ the field, and make claims to ‘know’ the subject under study. Core to my analysis is a critical process of self-reflection, through which I challenge the assumptions that underpin my assessment of my research participants’ ability to consent to participate in my study.