The emotional challenges of conducting in-depth research into significant health issues in health geography: reflections on emotional labour, fieldwork and life course.

Sarah Mcgarrol

doi:10.1111/area.12347

Abstract

Emotions are increasingly being recognised and integrated into human geography and it has been highlighted that focusing on the ‘interrelatedness’ of the research process is crucial. By contextualising fieldwork within the life course of the researcher, greater acknowledgement of the ‘emotional labour’ involved in fieldwork can be highlighted. The author reflects on the ‘emotional geographies’ of conducting PhD research into significant health issues with participants who had recently suffered a heart attack in Fife, Scotland. This paper reveals emotions involved in this kind of research, drawing on perspectives from participants as well as the researcher. The author also draws attention to, and reflects on, the lack of engagement with researcher's emotional labour within formal academic structures, such as research training and ethics application processes. Reflecting on fieldwork experiences from a distance, the author discusses the influence and impact of her emotional experiences of fieldwork. This paper contributes to work concerned with emotions and fieldwork in geography and asserts that greater importance and value needs to be given to this type of emotion work as embedded and situated within researchers’ life courses.

Highlights

Bondi (2005) has stated that it is crucial and ethically imperative to take seriously people’s emotions and emotions are increasingly being recognised and incorporated into human geography (Davidson et al 2005 2012)
Through reflecting on fieldwork some years later, I argue that the emotional experiences generated during fieldwork continue to influence my life course in myriad interlinked and interactive ways
This paper has presented a number of reflections highlighting the emotional labour involved in conducting research into the geographies of men’s and women’s heartattack experiences

Summary

Introduction

Bondi (2005) has stated that it is crucial and ethically imperative to take seriously people’s emotions and emotions are increasingly being recognised and incorporated into human geography (Davidson et al 2005 2012). The researcher’s job, during the interactive process of interviewing, includes acts of ‘emotional labour’ whereby the researcher is required to be emotionally aware and sensitive to their own emotions, as well as those of the participants (Carroll 2013). I present aspects of fieldwork conducted for my PhD research into men’s and women’s experiences of heart attack and recovery in socioeconomically contrasting areas in Fife, Scotland (McGarrol 2014).

Results

Conclusion