Comments on: Trauma and Resilience in Ethnographic Fieldwork

By: Najah

Najah — Sun, 28 Jul 2019 13:30:32 +0000

Thank you for writing this. For many of my architecture research colleagues (during PhD and post-PhD) whose work involves elements of social and cultural issues, these challenges are often shared and exchanged only among close-knit friends instead of being addressed within the institutions we are affiliated with. Looking forward to seeing more of this type of discussion.

By: Duska

Duska — Thu, 20 Jun 2019 13:34:13 +0000

Very inspiring and useful reflections!

By: Henyo Trindade Barretto Filho

Henyo Trindade Barretto Filho — Thu, 20 Jun 2019 11:37:53 +0000

Awsome. Anxiously waiting for the upcoming three first posts.

By: Jorge Contreras

Jorge Contreras — Thu, 20 Jun 2019 04:35:34 +0000

Thank you for your contribution to this field. I am very happy to read you and understand many thoughts and events that happened to me in my last trips to Colombia and Uganda. Can we have a conversation? I am finishing my master in Techno-Anthropology in Denmark and u have some ideas for collaboration.

By: Chino

Chino — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 14:07:43 +0000

This is an interesting piece.

By: Anya

Anya — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 08:58:54 +0000

Interesting article, following a trend in recent years of paying attention to the experience of fieldwork and its effect on our mental health. I wonder if you are familiar with The New Ethnographer? They run a blog specifically devoted to exploring the impacts of challenges in fieldwork – I wrote about the impacts of sexual harassment during fieldwork on my mental health for them last year (https://thenewethnographer.org/2017/02/14/gendered-bodies-2/). Might make for interesting comparisons!

By: Dominik Lukes

Dominik Lukes — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 08:02:52 +0000

This is a needed contribution but I find it intriguing that Malinowski’s diaries don’t come up more often in this context. Representing the original struggle against the colonial core of the discipline.

There are are also many studies of culture shock that I’m surprised anthropology does not reach out to.

By: Bernard Mueller

Bernard Mueller — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 07:12:31 +0000

Thanks for this very interesting blog.
I would like to extend the discussion from the trauma experienced by the “researcher on his field”, as it seems here the main preoccupation, to the trauma produced by the researcher on the field participants who do not always expect or understand what it means to be part of a field. As generous or humanitarian her/his project maybe, the ethnographer often exerts a form of power over their informants/participants/observed, etc. whose potential violence, basically epistemic, develops in an asymmetric relation on the “field”, that appears to be uneven (and revealing as such the colonial conditions of the birth of ethnography). In my opinion, the field is not just a data production device but merily a complex human situation composed of transforming relations among its participants… My question would be then : who experienced in the construction of its research object to be in a double bind position, and in a true doubt, legitimate in the view of the institutions that supports the research but illegitimate in the eyes of the persons object of the research ?

By: Katerina Volcov

Katerina Volcov — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 02:08:38 +0000

Great!

By: Chellaperumal

Chellaperumal — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 00:17:17 +0000

Good