ABSTRACT
This chapter explores my experience of conducting participant observation with an older middle-class population and how I encountered coercive behaviour and sexual harassment from a participant during my observational work. I spent large amounts of time with them, observing, interviewing and participating in the activities that they valued the most. As an early career researcher (ECR), a first-generation working-class academic (Crew 2020) who was unsure about my place in the academic world and worried about failure and disappointing those I worked with, I was willing to put myself in uncomfortable situations in order to recruit participants and to keep them. It was only years later that I was able to accept that what I experienced was more serious; it was a form of sexual harassment, where a participant used coercive behaviour to try and exercise their power over me to engage in a relationship that had sexual connotations. The first part of this chapter introduces my lived experience of sexualised behaviour aimed towards me, from a middle-class man of retired age (which is aged 65 in the UK) who was taking part in participant observation. This was an encounter I was not prepared to deal with then and even unsure how to address it now. The chapter explores why this could be the case by discussing the conjuncture of my identity as a woman, an ECR, a working-class academic and the consequences of when my instinct regarding my own well-being clashed with the demands of academia. The conclusion of this article makes suggestions for an all-round better ‘ethics of care’ (Gilligan 1982, Noddings 1984) for the researcher.
