Researching emotions and the emotions of researching: the strange case of Alexithymia in reflexive research

Abstract

Abstract:Despite the recent 'reflexive turn' in fieldwork-based sociology, and its organisational variants, empirical research often seems to ignore the role of the researcher's emotion in the collection of data and the creation of textual representations. The paper offers a retrospective autoethnographic account to argue that the separation of the physical act of research from its emotional experience is unsustainable. The paper offers a critique of the institutional framework of PhD study, which often seems to perpetuate a certain inattention to issues of emotionality within the research context, and argues the emotional experiences are key fieldwork experiences and an essential part of ethnographic study.Keywords: emotions in research; retrospective/auto-ethnography; reflexivity; ethics. Biographical notes: Matthew J. Brannan is a Senior Lecturer in Management at Keele Management School, Keele University and Director of International Partnerships. Previously, he held a post at the Centre for Labour Market Studies at the University of Leicester and was awarded a PhD from Wolverhampton University for his work on Call Centres and Employee Resistance. His current work focuses on the growth of the Service Sector and the contemporary experience of work using Ethnographic Techniques to gain an immersive insight to the world of work. He has written about the use of Role Play in Call Centre Recruitment and Selection processes, the engagement of worker's sexuality in customer service environments, the career path of female junior Managers and Employee Branding.

Work-worlds colliding: Self-reflexivity, power and emotion in organizational ethnography

“…Whilst authors have lately argued for a new, collective approach to reflexivity (Brannan, 2011;Riach, 2009), detail on how such approaches might be carried out remains scant. In order to explore how ethnographic research methods might be extended therefore, we present a 'pair interview' method for two ethnographers that uses case studies of ethnographic research.…”

“…Given that ethnographic research necessarily involves a prolonged, intensive immersion in a new social setting, and given ethnography's long-standing concern with selfreflexivity, it is particularly surprising that emotions do not feature more prominently in this 7 type of research (Brannan, 2011), despite the above exceptions. It appears that there is a need to explore how this might be done, with new methodological approaches being required.…”

“…What is rarely acknowledged, for example, is the often-difficult experience of being immersed in an unfamiliar social setting in which one is a stranger (Brannan, 2011;Cunliffe and Karunanayake, 2013;Kenny, 2009). …”

The perfect fit? Being both volunteer and ethnographer in a UK foodbank

“…In general therefore, a researcher's emotional journey tends to be seen as "embarrassing" and "to be avoided" in the final text (Lutz, 1988, p. 41). Given that ethnographic research necessarily involves a prolonged, intensive immersion in a new social setting, and given ethnography's longstanding concern with self-reflexivity, it is particularly surprising that emotions do not feature more prominently in this type of research (Brannan, 2011). Gilmore and Kenny (2015) emphasize how the research experience can be filled with anxiety, a strong sense of attachment, warmth and belonging to the organization along with a related aversion to discussing this in later writing, and feelings of guilt upon departure -also see Lindemann (2010), Tracy (2004), Gilmore and Kenny (2015, p. 17) note that "the activity of work was key to this, and we saw the pleasure that attended it".…”

Towards a Butlerian methodology: Undoing organizational performativity through anti-narrative research

“…This sought to develop a dialogic methodology designed to be both collective (Brannan, 2011) and intersubjective (Cunliffe, 2003), within which data generation and analysis formed part of a reflexive, dialogical process. This meant that, in a similar way to Stephenson (2005), our analysis proceeded by trying to denaturalize the accounts we were given, so that both data generation and analysis constituted an on going and integrated, reflexive process of methodological undoing.…”