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Paper short abstract:

I reflect on how grieving the death of my Tanzanian boyfriend during fieldwork in East Africa affected my relationships in and with 'the field'. Drawing from my experience of grieving during fieldwork, I reflect on the limitations of alienation and suffering for anthropological knowledge production.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I reflect on how the sudden death of my boyfriend, his brother, and our friend during the early fieldwork phase of my doctoral studies influenced my fieldwork. My visible grief caused a shift in my position from a white European anthropologist doing fieldwork in East Africa to (also) the bereaved (girl)friend mourning the death of three Tanzanian men. In accepting comfort and care from and sharing experiences of loss with interlocutors, artificial boundaries between 'personal' and 'professional' and between 'researcher' and 'researched' were blurred. While coping with grief during fieldwork had limiting practical implications, the interhuman relations that grew from empathy, care, and shared sorrow made people more inclined to share their own intimate and complex inner workings. In addition, the fact that my boyfriend had been Tanzanian influenced how people in the field positioned me: being the bereaved girlfriend of a Tanzanian 'brother' made me a shemeji (sister-in-law) who, as a relative, should be taken care of. This also affected how willing people were to be critical of Western organisations and actors in my presence. I compare my experience as a grieving ethnographer with my choice in earlier fieldwork to not disclose my relational status and the implications this had for my position in the field and the kind of relationships I was able to build. Finally, drawing from my experience of coping with trauma and grief during fieldwork, I reflect on the limitations of alienation and suffering for anthropological knowledge production.