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Selbstfürsorge im Feld. Überlegungen aus existenzanalytischer Perspektive
Abstract
Die wissenschaftlichen und persönlichen Ansprüche an FeldforscherInnen sind vielseitig und hoch. Wie diesen entsprochen werden kann und noch viel mehr, was die feldforschende selbst Person braucht, um gute Forschungsergebnisse erzielen zu können, scheint nach wie vor mehr von persönlichem als von wissenschaftlichem Interesse zu sein. Da die Feldforschung einen besonders intensiven empirischen Forschungsansatz darstellt und die forschende Person in das Feld involviert, hat diese eine Reihe nicht nur intellektueller, sondern vor allem auch emotionaler und psychischer Herausforderungen zu bewältigen. Selbstfürsorge ist dabei von grundlegender Bedeutung. Das Modell der existentiellen Grundmotivationen nach Längle basiert auf einer phänomenologischen Grundhaltung. Ziel ist es, durch dieses Modell eine Möglichkeit aufzuzeigen, wie Selbstfürsorge im Feld sowohl eine Bereicherung für die wissenschaftliche Tätigkeit und den Erkenntnisprozess, als auch zur Gesunderhaltung und emotionalen Offenheit des Forschenden beitragen kann, weit entfernt von subjektiver oder reflexiver "Nabelschau".
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In line with a more reflexive approach in social science, particularly amongst ethnographers, authors increasingly report not just what they have found from a piece of research but how they have gone about doing it. Using a similar style this article considers the importance of pilot work in undertaking qualitative and ethnographic studies, prior to researcher immersion in the ‘field’. It offers an account of the author’s experiences of ‘cold’and total immersion in a fieldwork setting and uses a contrasting example of a funded and carefully developed pilot study using a variety of methods, in order to highlight the benefits of pilot work. In doing so it suggests that while pilots are not new to ethnographers they are under-discussed and to some extent under-utilized, perhaps as a consequence of methodological allegiances and a tendency to link pilots with more positivist approaches in social science. The article suggests that while pilots can be used to refine research instruments such as questionnaires and interview schedules they have greater use still in ethnographic approaches to data collection in foreshadowing research problems and questions, in highlighting gaps and wastage in data collection, and in considering broader and highly significant issues such as research validity, ethics, representation and researcher health and safety.
As health researchers we need to investigate a wide range of topics to enhance our understanding of the many issues that affect health and well-being in today's society. Much of the health research undertaken today involves face-to-face encounters with participants using qualitative methodologies. There is a growing recognition that undertaking qualitative research can pose many difficulties for researchers. However, very little research has focused directly on the experiences of researchers while undertaking qualitative research and the issues that their involvement in the research raises for them.
To explore these issues, one-to-one interviews were conducted with 30 qualitative health researchers. A grounded theory analysis revealed that researchers can face a number of challenges while undertaking qualitative research. These include issues relating to rapport development, use of researcher self-disclosure, listening to untold stories, feelings of guilt and vulnerability, leaving the research relationship and researcher exhaustion. These results are discussed and recommendations for researchers involved in qualitative research are made.
There is a growing awareness that undertaking qualitative research is an embodied experience and that researchers may be emotionally affected by the work that they do. Despite the interest in the emotional nature of qualitative research, there is very little empirical evidence about the researchers' experiences of undertaking qualitative research. A grounded theory analysis of one-on-one interviews with thirty public health researchers working on a qualitative project provided both theoretical and empirical evidence that qualitative researchers undertake emotion work throughout their research projects. The findings provide examples of researchers doing emotion work in their research projects; highlight some of the consequences of emotion work and offer some suggestions for researcher self-care.
Keywords:emotion; narrative; ethnographic writing; fieldwork; literature
ABSTRACT In this article, I present the case for a narrative approach to emotion, identifying conceptual and presentational weaknesses in standard ethnographic approaches. First-person and confessional accounts, increasingly offered as a corrective to the distancing and typifying effects of cultural analysis, are shown to be unreliable; shared experience turns out to be an illusion. Instead, I suggest we look to literary examples for lessons in how to capture the full significance of emotion in action. Here, however, we reach the limits of ethnography.
Culture shock tends to be an occupational disease of people who have been suddenly transplanted abroad. Like most ailments, it has its own symptoms, cause, and cure. Many missionaries have suffered from it. Some never recovered, and left their field. Some live in a constant state of such shock. Many recover beautifully. As will be clear from the implications of Dr. Oberg's article, the state of culture shock in which a Christian lives will have great bearing on his temperament and witness.
The Shadow Side of Fieldwork draws attention to the typically hidden or unacknowledged aspects of ethnographic fieldwork encounters that nevertheless shape the resulting knowledge and texts. Addressing these invisible, elusive, unspoken or mysterious elements introduces a distinctive rigor and responsibility to ethnographic research. Luminaries in anthropology dare to explore the 'unspeakable' and 'invisible' in the ethnographic encounter. Considers personal and professional challenges (ethical, epistemological, and political) faced by researchers who examine the subjectivities inherent in their ethnographic insights. Explores the value, and limitations, of addressing the personal in ethnographic research. Includes a critical discussion of the anthropologist's self in the field. Introduces imaginative rigor to ethnographic research to heighten confidence in anthropological knowledge.
- Davies Spencer