Vulnerability in the Field: Emotions, Experiences, and Encounters with Ghosts and Spirits

Abdullah, Noorman

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-20831-8_25

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…However, we must not stop with just the undoing of researchers but move through that into the potential for redoing research and researchers. Our researchers experience “critical moments” (Abdullah, 2019, p. 287) and through later reflection and reflexivity, they can use their vulnerability to co‐construct new knowledge (Law, 2016; Mandalaki & Fotaki, 2020) about moments of power at research sites. We would propose that vulnerability in the field needs to be considered and understood so that researchers, their colleagues and supervisors can plan potential responses to moments of vulnerability so that researchers are not undone but retain some sense of agency in confronting ethically ambiguous research situations.…”

Section: Discussion: From Undoing To Redoing Through Vulnerability and Ethicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Show us what you’ve got”: From experiences of undoing to mobilizing agentic vulnerability in research

Plester

Kim

Sayers

et al. 2021

Gender Work & Organization

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This inquiry both builds on and extends exploration into gendered research through a focus on researcher vulnerability and its associated ethics. We discuss six critical vignettes across Western and Eastern contexts in which female researchers are "undone" and subsequently "redone" during their research endeavors. We draw upon Butler's work on gender and vulnerability, theorized as a subset of precarity. Attention is drawn to attempts to reframe, understand, and mobilize vulnerability differently, as a form of resistance, research activism, and emancipatory enactment. We propose agentic vulnerability as speaking to felt moments of vulnerability experienced in field research. We extend this contribution into a theorization of the researcher as activist, outlining practical applications of this concept. Ultimately, we seek to reposition agentic vulnerability in institutional research as a source of new ethics, research practices, and activism.

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Section: Discussion: From Undoing To Redoing Through Vulnerability and Ethicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Show us what you’ve got”: From experiences of undoing to mobilizing agentic vulnerability in research

Plester

Kim

Sayers

et al. 2021

Gender Work & Organization

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Reflexivity also enabled us to question our positionality in the field and when collecting data, as illustrated in the second example. This is often the reason cited for why reflexivity is utilised within the social sciences and related disciplines (Kleinsasser, 2010;Abdullah, 2019). However, as evident in ethical discourses about protecting 'vulnerable participants' of 'sensitive research', reflexivity tends to be associated with the idea of protecting participants from harm (Kumar and Cavallaro, 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Internalising ‘sensitivity’: vulnerability, reflexivity and death research(ers)

Borgstrom

Ellis

2020

International Journal of Social Research Methodology

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“…Or, doubt is regarded as an expression of the (young) fieldworker's professional uncertainty (e.g., Cook 2010; Pollard 2009). Recently, doubt has made it into the literature on the epistemic potential of affective field experiences, as in Kupier's (2019) description of how her own doubts about witchery attuned her to the ordinariness of both doubting and believing in witchcraft in Tanzania (see also Abdullah 2019; Cook 2010; Keilbart 2019). In fact, what the rising number of ethnographies discussing doubt highlights is exactly this point: that doubt is not a hindrance to spiritual or religious practices.…”

Section: Learning To Believe?mentioning

confidence: 99%

At the Edge of the Sensible: Cultivating Doubt in Radically Engaged Anthropology and Spirituality

Smith¹

2021

Ethos

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Transformative experiences have long been a central interest for anthropologists studying spiritual phenomena. During fieldwork, many ethnographers have themselves undergone such experiences, caused by and fueling their confidence in radical participation as the soundest approach to understanding spiritual phenomena. These anthropologists inadvertently find themselves faced with the question of the ontological status of such phenomena, responses to which range from embracing them as ontologically real to steering clear of judgment. Arguments pertaining to the authority of the anthropologist follow a similar path, belief either framed as a precondition for understanding such matters or as undermining analytical validity. This article outlines the third position. Based on radically engaged fieldwork conducted with people dedicated to spiritual and mindfulnessmeditation training in Denmark, I explore doubt as a transformative experience. Doubt, I hold, destabilizes both ontological certainty and the alleged analytical invalidity of engaged anthropology, making doubt, I argue, a valuable anthropological disposition. [Denmark mindfulness-meditation epistemologyand methodology] Danish abstract Transformerende oplevelser har laenge vaeret et centralt emne for antropologer, der studerer spirituelle faenomener. Som radikalt-deltagende oplever mange af disse antropologer selv at blive transformeret i løbet af feltarbejdet, hvilket forstaerker deres vurdering af radikal-deltagelse som den mest egnede måde at undersøge spirituelle faenomener på. Samtidig rejser oplevelserne spørgsmålet om spirituelle faenomeners ontologiske status, og her deler vandene sig mellem dem, der omfavner faenomenerne som ontologiske sandheder, og dem, der afviger fra at afgive vurdering. Denne splittelse forplantes ligeledes i diskussioner om antropologisk autoritet, hvor tro enten ses som afgørende for at forstå spirituelle faenomener eller som underminerende for analytisk validitet. Denne artikel skitserer en tredje position. Baseret på radikalt-deltagende feltarbejde blandt mennesker i Danmark, som er dedikerede til spirituel og mindfulness-meditations traening, udforsker jeg tvivl som en transformerende oplevelse, der destabiliserer både ontologisk vished og den angivelige analytiske invaliditet, og argumenterer for tvivl som vaerende en vaerdifuld antropologisk disposition."Spirituality. I have no sensory experience of it." The words were Karen's. We were in the car, Karen, Camille, and I, talking about meditation, mindfulness, and, yes, spirituality. It was September 2017, and this was the first of many long conversations, in this car, together, on our way to our mindfulness and meditation training. We were in it together, but rather differently: Camille with a Catholic upbringing and childhood experiences of sensing malevolent spirits; Karen with a mother who throughout Karen's childhood was engaged in meditative practices, and a sister who showed signs of possessing "special abilities" from an early age; and me with parents who were politic...

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Vulnerability in the Field: Emotions, Experiences, and Encounters with Ghosts and Spirits

Cited by 5 publications

References 25 publications

“Show us what you’ve got”: From experiences of undoing to mobilizing agentic vulnerability in research

“Show us what you’ve got”: From experiences of undoing to mobilizing agentic vulnerability in research

Internalising ‘sensitivity’: vulnerability, reflexivity and death research(ers)

At the Edge of the Sensible: Cultivating Doubt in Radically Engaged Anthropology and Spirituality

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