The Entanglements of Ethnographic Fieldwork in a Violent World

This book focuses on the emotional hazards of conducting fieldwork about or within contexts of violence and provides a forum for field-based researchers to tell their stories. Increasingly novice and seasoned ethnographers alike, whether by choice or chance, are working in situations where multidimensional forms of violence, conflict and war are facets of everyday life. The volume engages with the methodological and ethical issues involved and features a range of expressive writings that reveal personal consequences and dilemmas. The contributors use their emotions, their scars, outrage and sadness alongside their hopes and resilience to give voice to that which is often silenced, to make visible the entanglements of fieldwork and its lingering vulnerabilities. The book brings to the fore the lived experiences of researchers and their interlocutors alike with the hope of fostering communities of care. It will be valuable reading for anthropologists and those from other disciplines who are embarking on ethnographic fieldwork and conducting qualitative empirical research.

1 Entanglements of fieldwork: an introduction Nerina Weiss 2 Unspeakable:silences and silencing around fieldwork amid violence Samira Marty 3 Drawing on your inner anthropologist: some tools for violent and difficult ethnographic fields Ivana Macek 4 A cautionary and hopeful tale about experiencing, thinking with, writing through, reflecting on, and teaching the emotional in ethnographic fieldwork Jastinder Kaur 5 The fieldwork of never alone: reframing access as relationships of care Cari Tusing 6 ‘You are one of us’, but I wasn’t: managing expectations and emotions when studying powerful security actors Erella Grassiani 7 Conversations about violence during fieldwork in Colombia Colleen Alena O’Brien 8 Staying sane and safe in Israel/Palestine: a foreign researcher’s reflections on fieldwork across boundaries Andreas Hackl 9 Involved and detached: emotional management in fieldwork Anna Hedlund and Steven Sampson 10 On Catalina’s silence and the things about her I still do not know how to say Simone Toji 11 Side effects: how fieldwork and ethnography helped me reclaim my life Molly Hurley Depret 12 Violent experiences, violent practices: caring and silence in anthropology Lena Gross 13 Hospitality and violence: writing for irresolution Aya Musmar and Ann-Christin Zuntz 14 Getting closer to the skin: writing as intensity, writing as feeling Omer Aijazi 15 Cherry blossoms and grilled lamb Eva van Roekel Cordiviola 16 Making common cause: Ethics a politics, anthropology as praxis: an afterword Linda Green

Nerina Weiss is Senior Researcher at the Fafo Institute for Labour and Social Research in Oslo, Norway. Erella Grassiani is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Linda Green is Professor in the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona, USA.