Short Abstract:

In this lab, we encourage reflections on moments of vulnerability in fieldwork, which ‘stick’ with us, in affirming or uncomfortable ways, and which feel critical to ‘getting a sense of things’. We invite participants to consider the value of such emotions, knowledge, and reflections.

Long Abstract:

In this lab, we reflect on the consequences of vulnerability for what we see in the field, what we turn away from, and what makes it into our writing. The growing acknowledgment of vulnerability (Behar 1994) and positionality, of “how one’s lived experiences both enable and inhibit particular kinds of insight” (Rosaldo 2013: 135), has inspired ethnographic writing open to anthropology as a mode of relating as persons. It has led to experimentations with form to convey the intensity of encounters in the field. Flash ethnography (Stone and McGranahan 2020) and sudden anthropology (Syring and Offen 2017), for instance, centre on a particular moment, event, or feeling, through which anthropologists come to understand a place or view as critical in getting a ‘sense of things’. Here, we build upon such experiments to think about our positionality and why certain moments ‘stick’ with us: we are interested not only in moments of intense connection that we are eager to write about, but also those that make us uncomfortable. We see this exercise in part as a way of drawing together the spaces where we do fieldwork and where we otherwise dwell, reiterating the interconnectedness of these worlds.

In preparation, we invite reflections on a moment, relationship, or situation from fieldwork where your positionality and vulnerability came to the fore. What happened? What has it helped you understand? What place does such knowledge and reflections have in our methods, analyses, and ethnographies? How might they be included and to what end?