Emotions in the Field : The Psychology and Anthropology of Fieldwork Experience

by Davies, James

• ISBN13: 9780804769402
• ISBN10: 0804769400
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-03-08
• Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr

Summary

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.

Author Biography

James Davies is a member of St Cross College at the University of Oxford, a practicing psychotherapist in the National Health Service (Oxford), and a Senior Lecturer in the School of Human and Life Sciences at Roehampton University. He is the author of The Making of Psychotherapists: An Anthropological Analysis (2009). Dimitrina Spencer is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Oxford e-Research Centre and a Research Associate at the Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society at the University of Oxford.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Contributors	p. ix
Introduction: Emotions in the Field	p. 1
Psychology of Field Experience
From Anxiety to Method in Anthropological Fieldwork: An Appraisal of George Devereux's Enduring Ideas	p. 35
“At the Heart of the Discipline”: Critical Reflections on Fieldwork	p. 55
Disorientation, Dissonance, and Altered Perception in the Field	p. 79
Using Emotion as a Form of Knowledge in a Psychiatric Fieldwork Setting	p. 98
Political Emotions in the Field
Hating Israel in the Field: On Ethnography and Political Emotions	p. 129
Tian'anmen in Yunnan: Emotions in the Field during a Political Crisis	p. 155
Emotional Engagements: Acknowledgement, Advocacy, and Direct Action	p. 171
Non-cognitive Field Experiences
Emotional Topographies: The Sense of Place in the Far North	p. 191
What Counts as Data?	p. 212
Ascetic Practice and Participant Observation, or, the Gift of Doubt in Field Experience	p. 239
Index	p. 267
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