I wonder when (or if) ‘fieldwork’ really begins or ends

Speaker(s):

Lucrezia Gigante and Manas Murthy Kallakuri, University of Glasgow

Abstract:

We will revisit some of our fieldwork experiences to interrogate - through introspection – when our respective engagements with the ‘field’ really began. We argue that often in field-based qualitative research, there is a tendency to treat the ‘field’ as a finite and distant space (and time), that is separate from the researcher. This seemingly also extends to the people, objects, and phenomena we study. However, often, in practice, we find ourselves leaning on our predilections and past experiences to reframe and look at the ‘field’ in our own way. Our emotions often even dictate what we choose to study in the first place, bringing the ‘field’ into the fold of our affective world. Consequently, maybe fieldwork does not really only begin when we ‘enter the field’ (the geography we set out to study), nor does it end when we leave it.