Unwilling Participant Observation among RussianSiloviki and the Good-Enough FieldResearcher

Extract

In 1999, on a trip to Russia to study gender violence, I was sittingin on a special training at a Moscow police academy. In betweenjokes about the impossibility of prostitutes getting raped, thecops-in-training could not stop focusing on me, the one American andone of three women in a rowdy room. For example, one man loudlyasked me whether all Americans had cars and followed up with acomment that, of course we did, because this is where “you” (meaningme) would have sex. The training on rape and sexual harassment thatI had come to observe had come to a halt because the new police wereso intent on making sexual jokes. These comments felt even morethreatening than they might otherwise because, a few days before, Ihad been picked up by the Russian police, shoved into a police carwith several drunken officers, and driven around Moscow until Ioffered a bribe.