This book focuses on the emotional hazards of conducting fieldwork about or within contexts of violence and provides a forum for field-based researchers to tell their stories.
This book focuses on the emotional hazards of conducting fieldwork about or within contexts of violence and provides a forum for field-based researchers to tell their stories. Increasingly novice and seasoned ethnographers alike, whether by choice or chance, are working in situations where multidimensional forms of violence, conflict and war are facets of everyday life. The volume engages with the methodological and ethical issues involved and features a range of expressive writings that reveal personal consequences and dilemmas. The contributors use their emotions, their scars, outrage and sadness alongside their hopes and resilience to give voice to that which is often silenced, to make visible the entanglements of fieldwork and its lingering vulnerabilities. The book brings to the fore the lived experiences of researchers and their interlocutors alike with the hope of fostering communities of care. It will be valuable reading for anthropologists and those from other disciplines who are embarking on ethnographic fieldwork and conducting qualitative empirical research.
1 Entanglements of fieldwork: an introduction-Nerina Weiss; 2
Unspeakable: silences and silencing around fieldwork amid violence-Samira
Marty; 3 Drawing on your inner anthropologist: some tools for violent and
difficult ethnographic fields-Ivana Maek 4 A cautionary and hopeful tale
about experiencing, thinking with, writing through, reflecting on, and
teaching the emotional in ethnographic fieldwork-Jastinder Kaur; 5 The
fieldwork of never alone: reframing access as relationships of care-Cari
Tusing; 6 You are one of us, but I wasnt: managing expectations and
emotions when studying powerful security actors-Erella Grassiani; 7
Conversations about violence during fieldwork in Colombia-Colleen Alena
OBrien; 8 Staying sane and safe in Israel/Palestine: a foreign researchers
reflections on fieldwork across boundaries-Andreas Hackl; 9 Involved and
detached: emotional management in fieldwork-Anna Hedlund and Steven Sampson;
10 On Catalinas silence and the things about her I still do not know how to
say-Simone Toji; 11 Side effects: how fieldwork and ethnography helped me
reclaim my life-Molly Hurley Depret; 12 Violent experiences, violent
practices: caring and silence in anthropology-Lena Gross; 13 Hospitality and
violence: writing for irresolution-Aya Musmar and Ann-Christin Zuntz; 14
Getting closer to the skin: writing as intensity, writing as feeling-Omer
Aijazi; 15 Cherry blossoms and grilled lamb-Eva van Roekel Cordiviola; 16
Making common cause: Ethics as politics, anthropology as praxis: an
afterword-Linda Green
Nerina Weiss is Senior Researcher at the Fafo Institute for Labour and Social Research in Oslo, Norway.
Erella Grassiani is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Linda Green is Professor in the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona, USA.
