Paper short abstract:

Drawing upon field experiences of 'rapport rupture' in a Buddhist nunnery in South Korea, this paper explores how ethnographic 'failure' and conflict might be fruitfully understood, and works to unpack long-standing understandings of field 'rapport', along with notions of 'successful' ethnography.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing upon my fieldwork at Keumgangsa, a Buddhist nunnery in South Korea, this paper explores how ethnographers might fruitfully understand 'rapport failure', 'rapport rupture' and emotions in the field. I focus on how I gained, and then later lost, rapport with significant sections of the community. This resulted in censure, an acute and very public loss of face, my withdrawal from Keumgangsa, and a pervasive sense of shame. I employ these field experiences to examine and unpack long-standing understandings of field 'rapport' and 'cultural intimacy', along with their association with 'successful' ethnography. I argue that rather than amounting to ethnographic 'failure', difficult ,and even emotionally tumultuous, field relations can often produce invaluable data and crucial insights. I discuss how, upon examination of my experiences and data, I discovered that I had (perhaps paradoxically) gained cultural intimacy and powerful insights through the experience of shame and 'failure', and that these emotions were a crucial tool in data collection and understanding the monastic culture of the nunnery. I argue that my 'rapport rupture', loss of face and shame were equally vital to my analysis as were my 'successful' field relationships. Indeed, I do not believe I would have gained key insights without these experiences, which enabled me to move beyond polite social relations, which at Keumgangsa, often worked to conceal nuns' private lives.