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Diasporic researcher: an autoethnographic analysis of gender and race in political science

ABSTRACT Why do we find pervasive gender- and race-based discrimination and exclusion in the academy and in the field when feminist scholarship has, for decades, provided the tools necessary to make sense of and combat these very exclusions? I share my personal experience to ask what it means to produce knowledge as a woman of color in the academy and a diasporic researcher in the field. I draw on interpretive approaches, particularly autoethnography, to examine the contradictory situation where political science champions objectivity and meritocracy, which should make gender and race identities irrelevant, yet maintains gendered and raced hierarchies, which undermine efforts to diversify the discipline. I argue that this contradictory outcome is best explained by what I call exclusionary inclusion, where women and other minorities are formally included in academia, but always on a limited basis. I find that I am not seen by people either in the academy or in the field as a legitimate knowledge producer because of the gendered and raced nature of academia. These results suggest that not all scholars enjoy authority. This analysis is significant because it provides insight into the difficulty of achieving diversity within political science.