Creating Knowledge Collaboratively with Female Sex Workers: Insights from a Qualitative, Feminist, and Participatory Study

Abstract

This article reflexively engages substantive, epistemological, methodological, and ethical issues that surfaced during a feminist, qualitative, and participatory research project with 6 adult female sex workers in Seattle, Washington. Given the intersubjective researcher-participant relationship within participatory forms of inquiry, personal and professional roles and boundaries were often obscure, fluid, and minimally defined. Consequently, issues of power, those personal and institutional, facilitated intriguing tensions that captured this researcher's attention. Central to the issues explored in this article are significant tensions between collaborative, reflexive, community research and academic modes and structures. In-depth individual dialogue sessions provided opportunities to both explore and create knowledge collaboratively with sex workers about their experiences from their perspectives. A spontaneous interpretive focus group created an opportunity for the participants, working in diverse arenas of the sex industry, to meet and exchange thoughts, feelings, and experiences, as well as inform the inquiry process and the authenticity of the findings.