Dear Lydia Maria Arantes, dear all members,
this problem of dealing with an sensory-bodily approach in qualitative research, specially in ethnography, was the focus in my doctoral thesis. It focuses on how to do self-reflection and self-care during fieldwork and it is based on a phenomenological method. My thatfor developed method is called "Personal Field-Reflection". It can be used in-action and by oneself without group-reflection (which surely is also very important and already existing - ethnopsychoanalysis, dialogic introspection, ...). It will give fieldworkers a guideline to integrate bodily expierenced emotions, impulses and the first subjective interpretations and thoughts during gathering datas. But scientific data has than to be "diversed" by other interpretations and to be processed to become a scientific data. This is the important way and real task of anthropological work. Ethnography can only be the beginning of an anthropological approach, not its end - the same to data. It is the way from the subjective data to the scientific data. That's why I was working to develop such a method and it should help to adhere to oneself as qualitative researcher.
If you are interested, please read more:
Personale-Feld-Reflexion. Überlegungen und Leitfaden zur Einbeziehung von Selbstempathie, Emotion und Selbstreflexion in den Feldforschungsprozess anhand phänomenologischer Methoden der Existenzanalyse. In Strauss, Annika & Marion Linska (Hg). Selbstreflexion im Kontext medizinethnologischer Langzeitfeldforschung/ Self-reflection in the Context of Long-term Field Research in Medical Anthropology. Curare 38(2015), 1+2: 73-86.
Also:
2012. Selbst-/Reflexion in der Kultur- & Sozialanthropologie. Books on Demand, Norderstedt, ISBN-10: 3848250888
Selbst-/Reflexion und ihre Bedeutung für die Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie. Ethnoscripts 2/2006, Jahrgang 8: 145-158. ISSN1438-5244. http://www.linska.net/contents/13516/ausgewaehlte-texte
Wege zum Wissen. Emotionen und innerer Dialog als ein Schlüssel zur Erkenntnis in der qualitativen Forschung. Ethnoscripts 10/2012, Jahrgang 14: 119-144. ISSN1438-5244. http://www.linska.net/contents/13516/ausgewaehlte-texte
And you will find very interesting and informative aspects and ways of dealing with oneself and "soft" data in qualitative research in:
Reflexive Grounded Theory. Eine Einführung in die Forschungspraxis by Franz Breuer, Petra Muckel and Barbara Dieris (2017) Springer. 3. Auflage
I hope this will help to answer a few of your questions.
Greatings from Austria/Linz,
Marion Linska
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: The Anthropology-Matters forum mailing list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Im Auftrag von Lydia Maria Arantes
Gesendet: Dienstag, 24. Oktober 2017 23:06
An: [log in to unmask]
Betreff: anthropology vs. tech studies, "soft" vs. "hard", the researcher's body vs. numbers
Dear List Members,
In the class I am currently teaching we look at the intersection of sensory and social / gender(ed) hierarchies. Last week we discussed classical sensory anthropological / ethnographical literature, carving out the importance for the researcher to use all of their own senses in order to get a glimpse into the role of the senses in everyday life. One student had strong doubts about the validity of taking the researcher’s body so seriously when gathering scientific data. Her boyfriend is in technology studies and as it is already difficult for her to make him understand the (value of) the discipline of anthropology it is even more difficult to justify this sensory-bodily approach. Another student who is in a similar personal situation, confirmed the uneasiness this causes.
I totally get their (self-)doubts. A discipline as marginalised as cultural anthropology (former Volkskunde in Austria), employing ‘soft’ research methods and then going further by taking the researcher’s body into account seems just too much. Where is the science?, the question somehow arises for these undergrad students.
In a world, where numbers rule the production of evidence, also knowledge cultures as different as the “hard” sciences and, say, anthropology seem to compete with each other and define value of disciplines, respectively. My question is: What do I tell these insecure students? How do we “sell” our value to people with technological / “hard” science background? How do we make it plausible to them what and how we do it?
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