Affective Scholarship: Doing Anthropology with Epistemic Affects

Abstract

This article discusses the potential of fieldworkers’ affects as epistemic processes. It showcases lessons from long‐term fieldwork in diverse geographical locations (Indonesia, Germany, and Tanzania) and insights from our affective inquiries into coming of age on the streets, Sufism, and antiretroviral HIV‐therapy. Inspired by ethnographic writings relating to psychological anthropology and the “affective turn,” we propose epistemic affects as a core analytical means for venturing into a nuanced understanding of the processes, situations, persons, communities, and places we study (with). The article defines epistemic affect, situates it in contemporary debates on how to make affect epistemologically productive, and offers several field episodes to illustrate how affects might open up empirically robust ways of knowing. Finally, it introduces the broader idea of affective scholarship, which advocates systematic explorations of anthropologists’ relational engagements with interlocutors, the practices they study, and the things and places they encounter. [affect, emotion, epistemology, ethnography, fieldwork, method]

Embodied ethnography in psychology: Learning points from expatriate migration research

“…However, we can turn to the orientation of the researcher as key in embodied ethnography; here the researchers' personal experiences are foregrounded. The researcher deliberately attends to his or her experiences during fieldwork as part of the research process (Stodulka et al, 2018). Employing a reflective stance similar to analysis of counter-transference among psychologist (Devereux, 1967;Lorimer, 2010), where psychologists attend to the affective reactions evoked by the clients.…”

Introduction

“…And that is not all. On one level and in several instances, these texts also compel us researchers to consider more methodologically what it means to move in our fields while also being moved by them (see Mattes et al 2019;Stodulka et al 2018).…”

“…Engaging the Elsewhere, as becomes abundantly evident in this case, carries with it not only a "religious but inevitably also a political bearing. " Together, in their consideration of positionality and attunements, instances of moving and being moved, whether with, toward, or away from interlocutors, these texts enable an understanding of how and why researchers' affects are crucial to an 'affective scholarship' (Stodulka et al 2018).…”

Politicizing Elsewhere(s)

“…And rather than an obligation that may to some extent strain and obstruct procedures of academic publishing, I prefer to focus on the new insights into the positionalities, agendas, aspirations, and affective dispositions of both the researched and the researcher that this routine might generate (cf. Stodulka et al 2018).…”