Teaching Fieldwork Experience: Experiment, Embodiment, Emotions

Karolina Bielenin-Lenczowska,Iwona Kaliszewska

doi:10.22582/ta.v10i2.573

Karolina Bielenin-Lenczowska, Iwona Kaliszewska

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.22582/ta.v10i2.573

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Abstract

The emotional and sensual dimension of fieldwork, as well as the positionality of the researcher are often debated and considered crucial in anthropology. We assume that “good ethnography” includes sensory and bodily fieldwork experience. But how do we address these issues in teaching? How can we teach students to notice, analyse and make sense of their bodily experiences? How do we encourage the awareness of positionality? What practical steps can we take in designing suitable learning experiences that address these points? In this paper, we share our experience of teaching adapted courses that provide students with fieldwork encounters, where the significance of embodied knowledge can be explored, and their ethnographic awareness cultivated. Basing our analysis on the undergraduate Ethnographic Lab and Ethnographic Methods courses taught at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw, we argue that it is important to put students in uncomfortable or unusual fieldwork and teaching situations, forcing them out of their comfort zone so that they experience fieldwork encounters both emotionally and bodily. Recordings of these encounters and the bodily reactions of themselves and others constitute a core part of the data to be gathered, which prevents students from focusing solely on narratives and discourses.

Highlights

The significance of emotional and sensual dimensions of fieldwork, as well as of the positionality of the researcher, are often debated in anthropology
We share certain assumptions held about what a good fieldworker is: namely, a researcher well immersed in the field, locally connected, who participates in the daily life of his/her participants, helps with daily chores and pays attention to reciprocity and ethical issues emerging during fieldwork
Is this area restricted to “experienced fieldworkers”, who have learned, usually over time, to relate to their bodily experiences, and to analyse emotions, their own as well as those of their interlocutors? BA students are just starting their journey in anthropology, and they have limited time to develop these skills

Summary

Introduction

The significance of emotional and sensual dimensions of fieldwork, as well as of the positionality of the researcher, are often debated in anthropology. In our endeavour to make “good ethnographers” out of our BA students we aim to help them understand the significance of embodied knowledge and cultivate bodily and emotional awareness. These aspects of fieldwork are often overlooked in teaching and assumed to only come from practice. Anthropologists like to refer in their writings to bodily experiences and acquisition of embodied knowledge, deriving examples from their past experiences (Okely 2007) Is this area restricted to “experienced fieldworkers”, who have learned, usually over time, to relate to their bodily experiences, and to analyse emotions, their own as well as those of their interlocutors?

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