Emotions in the Field

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 Field" brings to mainstream anthropological awareness not only the viability and necessity of this neglected realm of research, but also its fresh and thoughtful guiding principles.

ISBN 0804769400   Pages 331 ISBN13 9780804769402 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 386 Publisher Stanford University Press   Published in Palo Alto Imprint Stanford University Press   Height (mm) 226 Format Paperback   Width (mm) 150 Publication date 15 Apr 2010   Spine width (mm) 18 DEWEY 305.800723   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate DEWEY edition DC21

Introduction		Emotions in the Field by James Davies		1
Pt. I		Psychology of Field Experience
1		From Anxiety to Method in Anthropological Fieldwork: An Appraisal of George Devereux's Enduring Ideas by Michael Jackson		35
2		"At the Heart of the Discipline": Critical Reflections on Fieldwork by Vincent Crapanzano		55
3		Disorientation, Dissonance, and Altered Perception in the Field by James Davies		79
4		Using Emotion as a Form of Knowledge in a Psychiatric Fieldwork Setting by Francine Lorimer		98
Pt. II		Political Emotions in the Field
5		Hating Israel in the Field: On Ethnography and Political Emotions by Ghassan Hage		129
6		Tian'anmen in Yunnan: Emotions in the Field during a Political Crisis by Elisabeth Hsu		155
7		Emotional Engagements: Acknowledgement, Advocacy, and Direct Action by Lindsay Smith and Arthur Kleinman		171
Pt. III		Non-cognitive Field Experiences
8		Emotional Topographies: The Sense of Place in the Far North by Kirsten Hastrup		191
9		What Counts as Data? by Tanya Luhrmann		212
10		Ascetic Practice and Participant Observation, or, the Gift of Doubt in Field Experience by Joanna Cook		239
		Index		267

"A powerful affirmation of the humanity of the field encounter in all its ambivalence, and a timely call for social scientists to harness the rich potential of a people-centered research enterprise." - Joao Biehl, Princeton University"

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