<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>In certain cultural contexts, many minority groups have historically found a space for resistant survival against the acculturation pressure from mainstream societies in the ossification and reaffirmation of gender roles and compulsory heterosexuality. In this context, out-of-the-norm masculinities can be complex and a source of suffering. The ‘emotional discomfort’ accompanies many researchers throughout their fieldwork. This work aims to set a dialogue between my ethnographic experience and the different approaches to the role of emotions from anthropology and situated feminist knowledges. In this article I take my emotional discomfort as a non-heterosexual ethnographer, experienced in fieldwork with Spanish Gypsy men where ‘authentic’ ethnic and gender identities were inextricably linked, as a space for analysis. This position of relative subalternity may be experienced as an impediment or incorporated as a privileged space of research. Here I defend that the discomfort can be incorporated at the ethnographic level, both in terms of content and methodology. Therefore my proposal involves a systematic analysis of how this experience is produced in the different stages of the field work and can be methodologically incorporated in a fruitful way.</p>
</abstract>

In certain cultural contexts, many minority groups have historically found a space for resistant survival against the acculturation pressure from mainstream societies in the ossification and reaffirmation of gender roles and compulsory heterosexuality. In this context, out-of-the-norm masculinities can be complex and a source of suffering. The ‘emotional discomfort’ accompanies many researchers throughout their fieldwork. This work aims to set a dialogue between my ethnographic experience and the different approaches to the role of emotions from anthropology and situated feminist knowledges. In this article I take my emotional discomfort as a non-heterosexual ethnographer, experienced in fieldwork with Spanish Gypsy men where ‘authentic’ ethnic and gender identities were inextricably linked, as a space for analysis. This position of relative subalternity may be experienced as an impediment or incorporated as a privileged space of research. Here I defend that the discomfort can be incorporated at the ethnographic level, both in terms of content and methodology. Therefore my proposal involves a systematic analysis of how this experience is produced in the different stages of the field work and can be methodologically incorporated in a fruitful way.

Discomforting Methodologies

Borderlands Journal

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Emotional discomfort in the field as a ‘situated’ researcher

In certain cultural contexts, many minority groups have historically found a space for resistant survival against the acculturation pressure from mainstream...

Discomforting Methodologies

Publicado en línea: 22 dic 2022

Páginas: 93 - 117

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21307/borderlands-2022-014

Palabras clave
Reflexivity, methodology, gender Identity, emotional discomfort, situated knowledge

© 2022 David Berná published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Discomforting Methodologies

Publicado en línea: 22 dic 2022

Páginas: 93 - 117

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21307/borderlands-2022-014

Palabras claveReflexivity, methodology, gender Identity, emotional discomfort, situated knowledge

© 2022 David Berná published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Palabras clave
Reflexivity, methodology, gender Identity, emotional discomfort, situated knowledge