Linked life courses in fieldwork: researcher, participant and field

Life course scholars have theorised the relationship between individual life trajectories and geographic phenomena such as migration, partnering, reproduction and locational choice. They have engaged less frequently with the politics of fieldwork or the interrelationship of the life course and the field. Feminist geographers, in contrast, have made significant interventions into the social dynamics of fieldwork (e.g. relationships between researchers and participants), but less so on the life trajectories that precede and follow the fieldwork encounter. This special section thus contributes to both life course geographies and ongoing feminist interventions into the fieldwork process. In understanding fieldwork experiences through a life course approach, the contributors to this special section simultaneously deepen and systematise much of feminist geographic research on fieldwork. Their work highlights how life events and turning points, including those before, during and beyond fieldwork, can profoundly change – or be changed by – research experiences and outcomes. They also reveal how the trajectories of researchers, participants and the field itself become interconnected within specific historical times and contexts.

Fieldwork in the social sciences is, by its nature, a messy and complicated process. Human relationships established between researcher and participants must be forged and maintained across social boundaries. Notions of difference, perceived through our bodies as they interact with other bodies, can often complicate these experiences in the ‘field’. Because of this, it is important that we remain aware of the effects our own positionalities can have on our research, as demonstrated in the experiences described in this article. Coming to terms with our own privileged identities, be it class, race, gender, nationality or educational background, in peripheral contexts, has demanded a degree of introspection from each of us. Many of us have often questioned our own legitimacy in the field and find ourselves wondering what right we have to enter communities and write about lived realities that we ourselves often do not experience. In seminar groups, hallways and coffee rooms of UCT, we often interrogate our positionality as young researchers in the field. This ‘identity crisis’ is partly because we are conscious that, in the context of the field, the researcher is continuously challenged with the implications of what her/ his body represents – difference and privilege. For some, this discussion may be dismissed as middle-class, guilt-ridden, self-involved drivel. However, the topics addressed in this collective piece continue to be unresolved in terms of how we, as up-and-coming researchers, rationalise the “body politics” of our own work. Here, we reflect on and respond to this real and permeating challenge which continues to emerge in our experiences and lives as global citizens and academics. The notes which we kept during our ‘fieldwork’, as a method to track and reflect on these issues in our research experiences, were key sources for the article. This is not a discussion that will necessarily bring new insights into the various themes we explore, but it does provide a critical forum in which we can collectively highlight some of the internal tensions we grapple with in the field as we interact with different and not so different communities. It might also intimate ways of tackling how we may transcend these challenges by moving towards a communicable purpose for those involved in the research process. This article threads together stories of language, nationality, gender, class and race, exploring how they feed into our individual and collective research experiences. These reflections also make use of Elaine Salo and Sophie Oldfield’s core course and its analytical ‘toolbox’ – a course in which all of us were participants between 2007-8. Moving from the narrated experiences of obvious outsiders to those included in some ways, and not in others, to an experience of doing research ‘at home’, the piece weaves together various experiences of difference. Perhaps these experiences of difference are linked to something more than just overt identity markers – that of simply being a researcher in the first place.

In this paper, four researchers who share a commitment to applied research and fieldwork methodologies reflect on the ambiguities associated with maintaining and adapting this commitment to changing professional, personal, and contextual situations. The authors focus on the use of fieldwork for the study and support of agricultural change in sub-Saharan Africa, as an example of a setting and topic in which long-term work in the field can improve understanding and support contextualized development. In analyzing a range of experiences associated with maintaining and adapting fieldwork approaches, we complicate and build upon the assertion that professional development pulls international development practitioners and applied researchers away from the field. The experiences analyzed in this paper suggest that the situation of changing orientations toward the field is not dichotomous, and that instead, a commitment to fieldwork can result in innovative approaches to remaining at least partially focused 'outward' and 'downward.' We argue that the epistemological underpinning of situated fieldwork, which recognizes partiality in knowledge and understanding, also requires reflexivity on the part of applied researchers. The reflections and analysis presented here broaden and ground conversations about research ethics, methodological consistencies, and innovative approaches to fieldwork.

Anthropology and Humanism, 2011

This special issue presents new, original essays by anthropologists who have spent a great deal of time carrying out fieldwork in a variety of ways and under many different conditions. Their ways of doing long-term fieldwork vary from revisiting the same community to doing multisited fieldwork to gain a broader comparative perspective in the discipline of anthropology. The authors wrestle with the meaning of their work after observing the people they befriended and studied undergo sometimesdevastating changes, suffering deep life-changing experiences themselves, and witnessing controversies over the value of doing and writing ethnography. [long-term fieldwork, change, methodology, theory, ethnography]

2006

2013

In this paper the author explores how relationships are defined within the context of constructing a life history. The life history of Benjamin, a homeless young man transitioning to adulthood, is used to illustrate how difficult it is to define the parameters of the research environment. During an "ethically important moment" in the research process, the author had to critically analyze his obligation to his participant based upon the relational titles exchanged. As chaos in Benjamin's life increased, a choice needed to be made about the researcher's involvement in his life. Should the researcher provide support or simply document events? Based upon the obligations inherent in how Benjamin defined his relationship with the researcher, the author explains why and how Benjamin's life was interrupted.

The Qualitative Report, 2013

In this paper the author explores how relationships are defined within the context of constructing a life history. The life history of Benjamin, a homeless young man transitioning to adulthood, is used to illustrate how difficult it is to define the parameters of the research environment. During an “ethically important moment” in the research process, the author had to critically analyze his obligation to his participant based upon the relational titles exchanged. As chaos in Benjamin’s life increased, a choice needed to be made about the researcher’s involvement in his life. Should the researcher provide support or simply document events? Based upon the obligations inherent in how Benjamin defined his relationship with the researcher, the author explains why and how Benjamin’s life was interrupted.

[e]motion, 2024

As I was enmeshed in my field of study in Thailand, a question posed itself with some intensity: When and where does fieldwork start and home end? Further, how does this condition the attention and behaviour of the body engaged in this activity?

2020

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