Crossing borders? Doing gendered ethnographies of third-world organisations

Sub-Saharan businesses share resemblance with contemporary post-modern organisations in the western world by blurred divisions between job and non-job activities. Ethnographic immersion then means that negotiations of trust and rapport take place across arenas ranging from business meetings till bars. The ethno-informed approach shows flirtation as a finely tuned interaction collaboratively constituted that may prolong field relations and access to a variety of data. This constitutes the background to the discussion of the dilemmas of good rapport.

I claim that flirtation should be regarded a resource the ethnographer can draw upon, but one that demands an awareness of negotiating alternative identities as buffer towards delicate or troublesome dimensions in field relations.