Embodied ethnography in psychology: Learning points from expatriate migration research

Abstract

Interviews and observation are often the preferred methods when psychologists conduct fieldwork. However, psychology can learn from recent developments in anthropology and sociology. Here researchers use their own embodied sensations in participatory research as a way to investigate less verbalized, more hidden, sensorial, and affective aspects of the life-worlds they are studying. In this article, I use case examples from research on privileged migrants (expatriates) to demonstrate how significant insights can emerge when we apply an embodied approach in our research. Migration is not only behavioral, social, verbal, or imaginative events but includes the migrant’s body—its sensory experiences and emotions. Thus, we need to embrace additional methods to investigate multifaceted psychological processes such as migration.

The Unarticulated Existential Body: Embracing Embodiment and Representation in the Ethnographic Model of Objectivity

“…As such, it works as a transversal methodology and should be considered paradigmatic in the anthropologies of the body, sensorial, and phenomenological. Referred to in similar terms by Creswell (1998), Turner (2000), Bernard (2002), Wacquant (2004), Monaghan (2006), or Schliewe (2020), these embodied ethnographies succeed in highlighting their respective subjects of study through an embodied perspective. However, the existential foundations of embodiment still admit further completion, which I shall start from the anthropological perspective provided by Csordas (1990) in his consistent application of the phenomenological insights offered by both Merleau-Ponty regarding the pre-objective.…”

Walking for well-being. Exploring the phenomenology of modern pilgrimage

“…Emotional experiences play an important role in our embodiment of the phenomenological experience (Schliewe, 2020), which is why the participants were asked in retrospect about their states of mood before, during and after the Camino. Although this study is not a clinical study and retrospective mood reports may be less than precise, the results can still shed light on the overall subjective experience.…”

“…Lopez et al (2017) found the attractive features of the Camino for the modern pilgrim to be (1) the natural landscape, (2) the slow mobility that facilitates introspection, (3) the authentic experience of experiencing different sensations, (4) multicultural and religious encounters and (5) monumentalizing, meaning sacred objects and values that are visual cues on the way. Furthermore, Schliewe (2020) found that religious experiences, and alternate relationships with the world, can be promoted by physical pilgrimage sites, emotionally laden symbolic objects and the pilgrims’ expectations, meaning that although not being chosen for religious purposes, walking the Camino can facilitate spiritual experiences due to external and internal factors.…”