The “Green Mile”: crystallization ethnography in an emotive context

Abstract

Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by emerald-srm:448207 [] For AuthorsIf you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to discuss emotions within a highly emotive organizational setting through the use of crystallization. The authors contend that the expression of a researcher's positionality as a presence within their research is crucial in contexts where conventional research approaches are unable to capture the depth of the phenomenon under study. The paper argues that the presentation of research findings from highly emotional organizational context will benefit from a challenge to traditional ways of representing and communicating the researcher's experience.As an example of this, in this paper the authors examine the emotions involved in experiencing animal euthanasia in a work context. Design/methodology/approach -The paper draws ethnographic methods of fieldwork in an Australian animal shelter. The paper uses autoethnography and interview data. Findings -Euthanasia is one of the most tolling experiences for animal shelter workers. This paper reveals that through a creative representation this experience may come induce understanding of the emotive context. Furthermore, the employees adapt one or more story-lines to deal with the conflict of euthanasia. Originality/value -The strength of this paper is that it uses a novel approach to present findings in the form of crystallization. It also furthers insight on how organizational members explain their involvement in emotive work-tasks.

Theorizing affective ethnography for organization studies

“…Many experiments have been conducted to trouble conventional humanistic qualitative research in fieldwork and in its writing (Ellingson, 2009; Guttorm et al, 2016; Pullen, 2018; Rhodes, 2015; Ståhl, 2016). An example is ‘crystallization’ as a style of writing that has been used by Tallberg et al (2014) in an ethnography of euthanasia in an animal shelter. Writing is considered in the entanglement of the social, the material, and the affective, instead of writing being viewed as an external imposition of categories upon a stable material world that awaits description and interpretation.…”

Becoming part of a temporary protest organization through embodied walking ethnography

“…This requires critical reflection on the researcher's role in the research (Mikkelsen, 2013;Tallberg et al, 2014). Through this reflexive process, we identified that that act of "walking with" others equated to taking the side of the temporary organization, Lyra's Walk.…”

Can Methods Do Good?

“…In bringing together multi-layered stories, I seek to suspend everyday assumptions about place and silence and imagine the ways the animal might speak to us, to form a particular message to the reader, transmitting, if you will, beyond words the emotional experience of a hidden context (Tallberg et al 2014). Crystallization is a path-breaking method, yet to be widely tested.…”

“…This method combines different genres (e.g. poetry, narratives, visuals) to make hybrid representations that aim to engage the audience on an emotive level in a participatory manner (Tallberg et al 2014). Feminist animal care theory, standpoint theory and dialogical aspects (Donovan 2006;) offer a theoretical base from which to create a connection between the writer (or researcher) and the audience.…”