Paper short abstract:

Fieldwork involves, as in any human relationship, feelings and emotions. Which are the reactions aroused by the fact of approaching a controversial institutional actor? And how can these own feelings and emotions have a place in the process of constructing knowledge?

Paper long abstract:

I have been doing fieldwork in police schools by eleven years. Fieldwork involves, as in any human relationship, feelings, reactions and emotions. Which are the implications of using an approach based on methodological proximity to do research in an institution whose praxis can be experienced as controversial? Which are the reactions aroused by the fact of approaching an institutional actor so different to oneself?

The relationship with others exposes us to new experiences, leads us to new boundaries. And here is where appears, in ethnographic scene, the own emotional baggage. It is clear that the intrusion of subjectivity and the emotionality attached to it are a systematic data within the intellectual routine of anthropological research. Nevertheless, feelings -mostly when are one´s own- are usually and quickly transformed in non-invited guests of ethnographic text.

This paper tries to share some of my personal experience to reflect upon the figure of the anthropologist in the field and upon the challenge and the richness that entails the use of feelings and emotions as a way of knowledge.