Gauging the Mood: Operationalizing Emotion through Ethnography

Tools

Callan, Brian. 2013. Gauging the Mood: Operationalizing Emotion through Ethnography. Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest, 1(2), pp. 61-74. ISSN 2572-7184 [Article]

Text
Callan 2013_Gauging The Mood-Operationalizing Emotion Through Ethnography_Manuscript.docx - Accepted Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial.
Download (44kB)

Official URL: https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/con...

Abstract or Description

This article illustrates a case study of an ethnographic research project in order to highlight the processes by which the project thesis emerged, the form of the knowledge on which it is based, and the relationship of that form of knowledge to other disciplines. The case-study is part of a larger ethnographic research project based in Jerusalem area between 2011 and 2012 on the sociality and affective processes involved in what is normally referred to as pro-Palestinian activism. Current anthropological concerns and debates are highlighted and discussed by following the ethnographic process from the development of a proposal based on a perceptual model of affect (Damasio, 2000), to ‘learning with people’ to the fieldwork phase (Ingold, 2008), to the analysis, interpretation of findings through the intersubjective faculty of judging (Arendt, 1968). Specifically, this work aims to clarify the form and validity of knowledge produced by an ethnographic engagement with phenomenological theory. Using an extract from field notes, from which I developed a thesis on role of weirdness in dissent, I highlight the intersubjective and emergent nature of knowledge production in ethnography through the development of trusting relationships with participants and the generative tensions and possibilities of being a researcher while also becoming an activist. In this process, the knowledge produced represents neither the participants’ nor the researcher’s understandings of the world but resides in what Arendt called a ‘third position’. Such a method of knowledge production should also be apposite to interdisciplinary exchanges within academia."

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.3167/cont.2013.010205