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Columbia, MO, USA. Virtually anything can be the topic of scientific study, but a male researcher finds that men doing field research on women are limited to certain subjects. So says Robert M. Baum, a professor of religious studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia (MU), who has dealt with this challenging situation in the field for over 30 years.
Most societies restrict the rights of women. One available stragem is to find a compelling rationale that secures female privacy away from male interference. Women's spaces that focus on a woman's reproductive cycle and fertility often enjoy male protection since men perceive such things as in their self-interest, promoting male potency. Women, in turn, can use the women's space for issues private to them that go beyond fertility rites and do so out of view from men.
From a Boy Not Seeking a Wife to a Man Discussing Prophetic Women: A Male Fieldworker Among Diola Women in Senegal 1974–2005. Robert M. Baum. Men and Masculinities 2008. doi: 10.1177 / 1097184X08315093.
"The question of whether men can conduct field research on women ultimately will be determined by the quality and type of the data that they gather," says Baum. "The subject matter of the field research will profoundly shape the possibilities of success.
For example, access to women's ritual spaces and esoteric knowledge may be too restricted for male researchers. Research on female religious leaders whose teachings are designed for both men and women and who preside over mixed congregations will be far more fruitful for men to conduct."
His conclusions about male researchers studying female subjects are based on his extensive observations of the Diola (pronounced joe-la) people. The modern Diola are primarily rice farmers.
Baum has been traveling to southwestern Senegal on the African continent and conducting field research among the Diola communities, approximately 600,000 people, for more than 30 years.
Initially, Baum's work focused on pre-colonial Diola religious history during the era of the Atlantic slave trade, a period when there were male prophets.
Later in his research, Baum studied the work and influence of Diola female prophets who began appearing after the French and Portuguese conquest of Diola lands in the late 1800s.
As he spent time in the Diola culture and grew older, Baum increasingly was given access to male religious elders and their shrines. Despite his improving social status, he found it was more difficult to study the rites and sacred places of women.
"My participation in the initiation of a new rain priest in January 1975, and my decision to perform a sacred dance with other men in the community, marked a decisive turning point in my fieldwork," Baum said. "This did not, however, provide a similar opening at the various women's shrines."
Baum said the most difficult topic to interview the women about was the primary women's fertility shrine, Ehugna, which was only accessible to women who had given birth. The most powerful female religious leader refused to be interviewed about anything related to her shrine.
… I dreamed I was pregnant … she laughed and said it was not good enough.
"She told me that the day I give birth to a child, I should come to her and she would explain everything about Ehugna," Baum said. "That night, I dreamed I was pregnant. I told her about the dream; she laughed and said it was not good enough."
Baum was able to collect information for his study of the Diola through a gradually widening network of women.
This information was restricted, however, because they taught him only what was permissible for men to know.
"There are limits to this knowledge," Baum said. "I could not attend the women's fertility shrine, which is the focal point of women's ritual lives. If I had gone to the maternity house, which is where young women receive their final instruction on what it means to be a woman in Diola society, I would have been ostracized from the men's shrines and societies. Many Diola consider men visiting the maternity house a serious violation that could result in death."
When granted the rare interview with a Diola prophetess, Baum was not permitted to take notes or use a recording device, but he had to rely on memory to recall the often hours-long sessions. The prophetess would speak freely of rain shrines and community oriented teachings, but was not willing to comment on her sacred work associated with Ehugna — no men allowed.
Robert M. Baum is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies, College of Arts and Science, University of Missouri-Columbia (MU). He also serves as Coordinator, Vice Chancellor's Africa Initiative Group.
From a Boy Not Seeking a Wife to a Man Discussing Prophetic Women: A Male Fieldworker Among Diola Women in Senegal 1974–2005. Robert M. Baum. Men and Masculinities 2008. doi: 10.1177 / 1097184X08315093.
Abstract
In this article I reflect on thirty-years of conducting field research in the Diola communities of southwestern Senegal. Initially this work was a community religious and historical study, but it gradually shifted to a focus on the history of Diola prophetism, most notably women prophets in the twentieth century. During that time, I shifted from an unmarried youth of twenty-two to a middle-aged married man. This article examines the continual intersection of the shift from a community religious history, including women’s fertility shrines, to a study of women prophets whose followers included men and women. Assumptions about my place within the communities gradually changed as people got to know me and as aging changed my social status. Complicating this picture is the dramatic erosion of Diola social norms since the 1970s, which have created far greater fluidity to gender relations in Diola townships and among Diola in urban areas.
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The Human Genome Project (HGP). The HGP identified all of the genes in the human genome and mapped their individual sequencing. Basic work began in 1990 and reached completion in 2005, sparking continuous refinements and new projects. Though the HGP is finished, data analyses will continue for many years.
A genome is all the DNA in an organism, including its genes and other materials. Genes carry information for making all the proteins required by all organisms. These proteins determine, among other things, how the organism looks, how well its body metabolizes food or fights infection, and to an extent even how it behaves.
DNA is made up of four similar chemicals (called bases and abbreviated A, T, C, and G) that are repeated millions or billions of times throughout a genome. The human genome, for example, has 3 billion pairs of bases. The particular order of As, Ts, Cs, and Gs is extremely important.
The order underlies all of life's diversity, even dictating whether an organism is human or another species such as yeast, rice, or fruit fly, all of which have their own genomes and are themselves the focus of genome projects. Because all organisms are related through similarities in DNA sequences, insights gained from nonhuman genomes often lead to new knowledge about human biology.
Video:An introduction to the ongoing Human Genome Project, courtesy of the US National Institutes of Health NIH) (18 May 2007). Time: 00:03:33. Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs.
His conclusions about male researchers studying female subjects are based on his extensive observations of the Diola (pronounced joe-la) people. The modern Diola are primarily rice farmers. 
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