Navigating hostility in the field and academia: Understanding integrity through the lens of a woman researcher in postcolonial primatology

Abstract

Scientific fieldwork and academic collaboration are often framed as neutral processes guided by method and evidence. Drawing on field‐based research and subsequent academic experiences, this essay examines how integrity becomes an active practice rather than an assumed attribute for women researchers working within postcolonial field sciences, specifically primatology conducted across geopolitical asymmetries of the Global South and North. Feminist anthropology has theorized gendered power in fieldwork and ethics of care but has not fully theorized integrity itself as a relational practice. Here, I present how gendered vulnerability in the field, heightened scrutiny in evaluation, and contested authorship negotiations reveal the structural conditions under which bodily autonomy, intellectual ownership, and recognition of labor must be defended. Rather than treating these moments as isolated incidents, I situate them within broader hierarchies of credibility, institutional prestige, and geopolitical positioning that shape contemporary primatology. I argue that integrity functions as boundary work, an ongoing effort to align labor with recognition in environments where credibility is unevenly presumed. By foregrounding these dynamics, the essay expands ethical reflection beyond methodological compliance to include the institutional and relational conditions under which scientific knowledge is produced and circulated.