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The Anthropologist in the Middle of a Tug-of-War

Among anthropologists of both sexes, there is an enduring cliché that female anthropologists have better access to women's worlds than their male counterparts. I work about female religiosity in a West African Muslim society, the Bulongic (Guinea-Conakry), and my presence as a man was never an issue with the Bulongic women. In fact, from the beginning, I had the feeling that through my presence, the women intended to reinforce the legitimacy of their ritual performances, which was violently contested by the old men of the village. In this article, I address my position in the middle of this tug-of-war between the men and the women. By describing the ways in which Bulongic women instrumentalized my presence as a white ethnologist sensitive to their religious practices, I hope to refine our understanding of the actual effects of gender in the field.