Abstract
Abstract This running theme’s introduction rethinks fieldwork as an ongoing process. It explores experiences and conceptions of ‘becoming fluent in fieldwork’: the contextual processes through which we do, learn, and unlearn practices of fieldwork. It sees fieldwork as a collective project. Recognising the entanglement of field sites and travelling with fields to certain other fields, we become multiply entangled, and thus we ask: what do these plural relations demand from us? We turn to the concept and praxis of love as it considers the responsibility, care work and thinking-working together that is needed to respect other people’s realities together with them. We foreground the notion of ‘becoming fluent’ that reflects fieldwork as a work in process, and emphasises the processual aspects of fieldwork: the journey that spans the time before, during and after the fieldwork. This process involves engaging meaningfully with relations, relationality and collaboration, ‘ongoingness’ and ethics in motion.
Highlights
It was in Aberystwyth at the International Politics department where we started working together
In monthly ‘fieldwork chats’ we gathered with a small group in a café on campus, discussing our fieldwork practice, sometimes texts that spoke to puzzles that animated our experience, ethical dilemmas and our own positionalities in our respective fields
Without giving a neat definition, we propose that fieldwork fluency carries certain components: relations, relationality and collaboration, ‘ongoingness’ and ethics in motion
Summary
In monthly ‘fieldwork chats’ we gathered with a small group in a café on campus, discussing our fieldwork practice, sometimes texts that spoke to puzzles that animated our experience, ethical dilemmas and our own positionalities in our respective fields These conversations felt really rich to us and seemed to raise even more questions that we could not figure out. Some started to question the term activist, others did not want to label themselves as such, worrying that they would become seen as gatekeepers of ‘activism’, rather than keeping political action open and inclusive These outcomes of my encounters got me wondering what even ‘our’ role is as researchers in theorizing and writing about social problems, and whether laying claim to or putting expectations on ourselves of being an ‘activist’ isn’t unnecessarily making things difficult for ourselves. What do I write about and how? Who do I talk to, to be able to do so? I understand that walking with such questions will be an ongoing part of my research journey and my journey as a researcher
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