How Did It Feel for You? Emotion, Narrative, and the Limits of Ethnography

Abstract

In this article, I present the case for a narrative approach to emotion, identifying conceptual and presentational weaknesses in standard ethnographic approaches. First-person and confessional accounts, increasingly offered as a corrective to the distancing and typifying effects of cultural analysis, are shown to be unreliable; shared experience turns out to be an illusion. Instead, I suggest we look to literary examples for lessons in how to capture the full significance of emotion in action. Here, however, we reach the limits of ethnography.

The Sugi sakit Ritual storytelling in a Saribas Iban rite of healing

“…"Emotions", as Andrew Beatty asserts, "implicate narrative, and vice versa" (2014: 558). Narratives provide the time-dimension needed for the development and playing out of emotions, while emotion-eliciting situations are the primary subject matter of narratives (see Beatty 2010). The principal hero of the Sugi story is portrayed as a miraculous healer, who is able to bring back to life even the enemies he has decapitated in battle.…”

Narrative, emotion and action: analysing ‘most memorable’ professionalism dilemmas

“…Emotion can be classified by intensity and valence, as, for example, negative (anger, anxiety, sadness) or positive (pride, happiness) 15 . Emotions are intertwined with narratives: narrative evokes emotion and emotion shapes narrative 13,20 . Narratives allow us to access human experience as simultaneously meaningful and emotional 13 .…”

The Emotionality of Participation

“…I claim the opposite. Emotions are thus not merely research tools, but they frame data, are a part of other data, and function as data on their own (Beatty 2010;Campbell 2002;Davies 2010;Hage 2010;Lee-Treweek and Linkogle 2000;Lumsden 2009). Emotions are thus not merely research tools, but they frame data, are a part of other data, and function as data on their own (Beatty 2010;Campbell 2002;Davies 2010;Hage 2010;Lee-Treweek and Linkogle 2000;Lumsden 2009).…”