Reflections on the flow of emotion in environmental research
In this article I provide a reflexive account of my emotions both prior to and during fieldwork. I begin with a personal narrative that explores my motivations for conducting a study on a pertinent environmental issue – river pollution. My comparative ethnographic fieldwork in two different soc...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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World Anthropologies Network
2010
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| Online Access: | http://irep.iium.edu.my/35379/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/35379/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/35379/1/NA_tajuddin.pdf |
| Summary: | In this article I provide a reflexive account of my emotions
both prior to and during fieldwork. I begin with a personal
narrative that explores my motivations for conducting a
study on a pertinent environmental issue – river pollution.
My comparative ethnographic fieldwork in two different
socio-cultural and environmental settings, that of the
Klang River in Kuala Lumpur and the Torrens River in
Adelaide, yielded stories, pictures, and/or a spectrum of
emotions about people’s interactions with the rivers, some
of which resonated with my own. On the one hand, positive
emotions during fieldwork were triggered, for example,
when I observed colourful flora and fauna in certain section
of the rivers. On the other hand, I experienced negative
feelings when I observed floating rubbish and trash racks
installed across the rivers. I describe these personal fieldwork experiences, alongside a discussion about my own
reflections. Finally, and in light of my fieldwork experience, I briefly suggest implications for ethnographic research and methodological practice.
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