Emotions in the Field The Psychology and Anthropology of Fieldwork Experience [Hardcover]

As emotion is often linked with irrationality, it's no surprise researchers tend to underreport the emotions they experience in the field. However, denying emotion altogether doesn't necessarily lead to better research. Methods cannot function independently from the personalities wielding them, and it's time we questioned the tendency to underplay the scientific, personal, and political consequences of the emotional dimensions of fieldwork. This book explores the idea that emotion is not antithetical to thought or reason, but is instead an untapped source of insight that can complement more traditional methods of anthropological research.With a new, re-humanized methodological framework, this book shows how certain reactions and experiences consistently evoked in fieldwork, when treated with the intellectual rigor empirical work demands, can be translated into meaningful data.Emotions in the Fieldbrings to mainstream anthropological awareness not only the viability and necessity of this neglected realm of research, but also its fresh and thoughtful guiding principles. In recent years reflexive accounts of fieldwork have become commonplace in anthropology. This book, while it provides a welcome contribution to this mode of anthropology, goes well beyond it by treating the emotions and experiences of fieldwork in an analytical rather than anecdotal manner . . . This book will provoke discussion of fieldwork from a new perspective, and hopefully spark new contributions to the literature. It will be of most use to those concerned with the linkages between ethnographic methodology and the analyses that anthropologists produce, as well as to those entering the field or newly returned. I have already recommended it to a number of graduate students as a significant resource in predicting, understanding, and analyzing fieldwork practice. A powerful affirmation of the humanity of the field encounter in all its ambivalence, and a timely call for social scientists to hals,