Emotion and the Researcher

Sites, Subjectivities, and Relationships

Tracey Loughran, Dawn Mannay, Tracey Loughran, Dawn Mannay

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781787146129
• eBook ISBN: 9781787432628
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Research & Methodology in Psychology
• Index: Social Sciences

Traditional research discourses continue to present academic work as rational, detached, objective and free from emotion. This volume argues that the presentation of research as 'objective' conceals the subject positions of researchers, and the emotional imperatives that often drive research. The collection engages with the emotional experiences of researchers working in different traditions, contexts and sites, and demonstrates their centrality in data production, analysis, dissemination and ethical practice.  

This edited volume offers contributions from a range of well-established and early career scholars who argue for an emotional rebellion in the academic world. The authors reflect on their own experiences of research, generously sharing their approach to their craft, and the uncertainties, concerns, enjoyments, and questions it entails. The contributors are based in a range of disciplines across the humanities, social sciences and STEM, and in the museum sector. This provides a unique opportunity for reflection on differences between and similarities across disciplinary boundaries, shedding new light on common problems and opportunities stimulated by emotion in research. 

The collection demonstrates how emotion can be valuable and meaningful in the activities of research, reflection and dissemination: offering authenticity to the academic voice, bringing clarity to interpretive biases, producing engaging outputs which connect with diverse readerships, and potentially reshaping disciplinary foundations and relations. Emotion and the Researcher: Sites, Subjectivities and Relationships will be an invaluable companion for researchers, postgraduate students and other academics with an interest in the emotional elements of conflict, negotiation, relationality and reflexivity, within and beyond the research encounter.

PART I

REFLEXIVITY AND RESEARCH RELATIONSHIPS

CHAPTER 1

ROLE TRANSITIONS IN THE FIELD AND REFLEXIVITY: FROM FRIEND TO RESEARCHER

Lisa-Jo K van den Scott

ABSTRACT

Purpose – Occasionally, we find our social roles transitioning from friend to researcher. This chapter is a reflexive account of one such transition. The author examines the emotions, the concerns and the rewards and stresses of this shift in her relationship with individuals and community.

Methodology/Approach – The author moved to Arviat, Nunavut, in 2004 and gradually found her inner sociologist could not be contained. Through a process of consultation with the Inuit community in which she was residing, she transitioned from the role of friend to that of researcher. This was complicated by her social location as a Western outsider who had been accepted as a community member.

Findings – Reflexivity is a key component of mitigating the challenges which arose and pursuing ethical research, as well as managing the dynamic range of experiences and feelings which emerged during this process.

Keywords: Emotions in the field; Inuit; reflexivity; researcher role; insider/outsider status

INTRODUCTION

I eyed the black, gelatinous meat warily, trying not to let my uncertainty show on my face. It was a bright May day, and we were visiting friends out on the sea ice during the annual fishing derby. I had just been offered igunak: raw, aged walrus meat. I could feel their questions: ‘How would the qablunaaq [a person from South of Churchill, Manitoba, usually white] cope?’ ‘Would she try the delicacy, or judge the eating of raw meat?’ I smiled my gratitude, sank to my knees in front of the meat sitting in a grocery bag on the snow, and cut myself a slightly too generous piece with a nearby ulu (a curved, Inuit knife). Fear rose up. Would I get sick from raw, aged meat? If I did not try it, how would that impact on my friendships there? Could I actually get it down with a pleasant expression on my face and would a slip make it worse than not trying it? I put the meat into my mouth and chewed once, twice, and swallowed the rest of it whole. To my surprise, I found that if I had been accustomed to the texture, I would have found the taste pleasurable. But, as it rested against my tongue, invoking the palette of a distant place and culture, it was quite challenging.

When I got home, I called one of my good friends (an Inuk friend) and told her what I had eaten. She was impressed and told me she would not go near the stuff! Rather like blue cheese, you love it or you hate it. Nevertheless, I had made an impression for being willing to try igunak. That was 12 years ago, and I am still relieved that I was able to partake in the offered food. Since then, however, I have been quite aware that this ‘commitment act’ (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995), which was in the context of friendship, helped pave my way to being a researcher in this community. This chapter is a reflexive account of my transition from friend to researcher in a remote Inuit hamlet in Nunavut, Canada.

I moved to Arviat, Nunavut, in 2004 and gradually found my inner sociologist could not be contained. Through a process of consultation with the Inuit community in which I was residing, I transitioned from the role of friend to the role of researcher. This was further complicated by my social location as a Western outsider who had been accepted as a community member prior to the transition to researcher. I examine the emotions, the concerns and the rewards and stresses of this shift in my relationship with individuals and the community. Reflexivity is a key component of mitigating the challenges which arose and pursuing ethical research, as well as managing the dynamic range of experiences and feelings which emerged during this process.

Arviat, Nunavut, is home to roughly 2,500 people. It is only accessible by airplane and maintains one of the more traditional Inuit ways of living in Nunavut. Inuktitut is still the dominant language and traditional foods common. The government of Canada forcibly settled the citizens of Arviat, Arviammiut, into this community during the late 1950s through the mid-1960s. All names here are pseudonyms.

NEW FRIENDS

I moved to Arviat in the capacity of the music teacher’s wife. My status there as a married woman allowed me into settings which otherwise would have been restricted. For example, I could interact with men in a business capacity without worrying that people would talk. There were single Western women living in town as teachers or government workers, but they were either considered to be of low moral fibre, or were restricted to only interacting with other women. Soon I found work as a substitute teacher and then as an instructor at Nunavut Arctic College.

When I initially arrived, I had just completed my MA in Ancient Greek and had no sociological research intentions. I did not intend to make the Inuit my object of study, nor to become a scholar of the social processes at play within the community. I built trust-based relationships, friendships and worked to embed myself in the community as an active participant, learning the language as well as involving myself with sewing seal-skin boots and spending time with Elders.

I had been in Arviat for two weeks when a woman who had heard of my father (a well-known academic and fellow Bahá’í) was visiting the community. She called one evening and told me she had been hired to facilitate meetings between Elders and youth within the community. She invited me to join these meetings, and I was therefore extremely fortunate to be presented to the Elders en masse. This helped me formally enter the community in the role of ‘learner’ (van den Hoonaard, 2012), with the proper respect due to the Elders.

In my first lunch with them, I was put to the test and engaged in my first commitment act (Emerson et al., 1995). The meal was entirely traditional, consisting of muqtaaq [whale blubber], both cooked and raw, caribou meat (raw), dried raw fish and bannock. The food was offered to me. In that moment, they were testing not only whether I would be willing to try foods they knew to be ‘offensive’ relative to my cultural sensitivities, but also whether I would judge them for eating such foods, as so many have before. I gamely tried all of the foods offered, with a smile on my face. From that moment on, the interactions of the Elders with me changed. Where they were polite before, now they were warm and accepting. I was officially welcomed into the community.

That evening I was invited to the drum dance, along with my husband, who showed he was game to try drumming while I was game to try throat singing and Ayaya songs, the traditional songs the women sing while the man drums. At the end of the week-long meetings, we returned from my first land trip and traditional feast. With several of us piled on the back of an ATV, as we bounced along the dirt track, dust gritting in my teeth, eyes, ears, and nose, one of the women who works regularly with the Elders told me, to my surprise, that they were thinking of electing me to Sivullinut, the Elders’ council.

I was the first non-Inuk, first non-Elder on the council. We served each other well. They facilitated my immediate access to and acceptance by the community, while I helped them navigate the world of bureaucracy in filling out funding applications. I was surprised and grateful to be treated with the full respect of the others. I did not yet know Inuktitut when I started on the council. They would consult for about 20 minutes, and then wait while the entire conversation was translated for me. I would respond and that would be interpreted. Then it would be a smoke-break. They could have gone to smoke while the translation was done for me, but they waited patiently through the English they did not understand and were later always patient with me as I bungled through learning the language in my first year there. With no textbooks, one can only learn the Arviat dialect of Inuktitut through conversation and perseverance.

It was thus that I became quickly involved in the affairs of the community. Soon after, I volunteered at the drop-in centre and taught cross-stitch. The next day, I had a young girl at my door wanting to learn more. The following day there were three of them. Over my five years of living there, I had over 150 girls and a few boys come through my living room to participate in what developed into an after-school program for at-risk youth, including a few sleepovers where 15 sleeping bags lined my living room floor with girls ranging in age from 7 to 13. Children, whom the teachers defined as unable to concentrate, would stitch with deep concentration for hours on end. Eventually, we also did math, photography and cooking. By involving myself with the children, I inadvertently made many ties within the community. Above all, I was able to show that I could have a full, crazy, messy house ‘just like an Inuk’, as one of the Elders said when she dropped by with some paperwork and saw 10 girls hanging out at my house.

During my first few years in Arviat, I had found a place for myself in the community, and a circle of good friends. I built these relationships with the same intentions as I would build relationships anywhere I have moved: to have a healthy, participatory social life in which I felt a sense of belonging; to have an emotionally satisfying life. Gradually, however, sociological questions began to crop up, and I wanted to explore these questions as a researcher. In hindsight, the formation of these good-faith, reciprocal (Fine, 1996), trust-based relationships benefited not only my participants, myself and my research, but adheres to recommended practices in working with aboriginal communities (Brook & McLachlan, 2005; Caine, Davison, & Stewart, 2009; Castleden, Sloan Morgan, & Lamb, 2012; Wong, Wu, Boswell, Housden, & Lavoie, 2013). Over several years, I watched my friends navigating their everyday spaces and eventually, I began to think about how to transition into the role of researcher.

FINDING MY INNER SOCIOLOGIST

I had noticed from the start, as I was welcomed into different homes, the ways in which Inuit people treated their walls varied tremendously. The most dramatic decoration that pushed my sociological imagination to the fore was Lily’s wall. She had viscerally taken control of her wall and, with rocks from the tundra, carved traditional scenes into it and created an impressive mosaic. She engaged with her built environment and used it to express her Inuit identity. Her home, in particular, stood out. Some other homes had completely bare walls, often grimy with dirt or holes, while still others had collages of family photographs, attached with tape or push pins, and other paraphernalia creating a chaotic scrapbook of their lives. I knew there was a sociological story here, and I determined to learn what it was. What did this built environment mean to them? And, ultimately, how do the Inuit negotiate and perform their Inuit identities while living inside qablunaaq structures and spaces?

While many of my participants were confused as to my interest in walls and space and place, they were eager to help me with my schooling, as well as to share their lived experiences within and without their homes. I am humbled by their candidness and their acceptance of me as a researcher within the community. Not all researchers are accepted with open arms in Nunavut (Caine et al., 2009; Collings, 2009). During an interview with Lily, another Elder arrived and saw that Lily was in the middle of being interviewed. The newcomer installed herself on the couch (Lily and I were seated at the table) and crossed her arms and glared at me. I suggested to Lily that I return the next day to complete the interview. At first she encouraged me to go on, but the Elder glared and huffed and made quite a show of disapproval, such that I soon told Lily I thought it would be better if I came back the next day. She agreed and I stood to leave. Before leaving, I thought it wise to go say hello to the Elder since I knew her. Her children and grandchildren had learned stitching from me and had also been my husband’s students.

I approached the couch rather cautiously as her glare was intense and her body posture defensive and almost aggressive. While I said hello to her in Inuktitut, I undid the bun in my waist-length hair since it was slipping. My intention was to re-bun it quickly as I paid my respects to the Elder. As soon as my hair came tumbling down around me, the Elder recognised me. Her entire demeanour and body posture changed instantly. She jumped up from the couch and hugged me and started laughing, saying that s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction: Why Emotion Matters
• Part I. Reflexivity and Research Relationships
• Part II. Emotional Topographies and Research Sites
• Part III. Subjectivities and Subject Positions
• Afterword
• Index