Paper short abstract:

In this paper I will address how emotional entanglement can be the driving force for activism and engagement within and outside the academia. I will also talk about how it complicates the task of the researcher by multiplying the roles they have to juggle and raising the issue of divided loyalties.

Paper long abstract:

"I fell in love with the place" must be the only phrase I recall verbatim since my fieldwork in an occupied forest in 2018. It was pronounced by one of my field collaborators, climate activists. I, in my turn, fell in love with that place too, and in my mind I turn to it even now, which confirms the forewarning of yet another of my research collaborators - that of the risks to never really be able leave the forest.

In this paper I will address how emotional entanglement can be the driving force for activism and engagement within and outside the academia. I will also seek to talk about how it complicates the task of a researcher already juggling multiple roles which they have to take up, along with various risks they encounter when trying to manage the issue of divided loyalties.

I will further invite to discuss, based on my previous fieldwork and amidst the preparations for the future one, what (methodological) frameworks, if any at all, might be useful in "staying with the trouble," as well as how and if entanglement can be of use to the ethnographer "gone native".