When Fieldwork Hurts: On the Lived Experience of Conducting Research in Unsettling Contexts
ISBN: 978-1-78769-184-1, eISBN: 978-1-78769-183-4
Publication date: 11 April 2019
Abstract
We explore the lived experience of organizational scholars who have conducted fieldwork in unsettling contexts. Through analyzing our interviews with these scholars, we find themes around the causes and consequences of unsettling fieldwork, and the coping strategies employed. We reflect on the often overlooked emotional and relational aspects of conducting and coping with unsettling fieldwork, and offer some suggestions for how scholars might support each other, especially given the increasing prevalence of organizational scholarship that pushes boundaries by engaging unconventional topics and settings.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
We are very grateful to our colleagues who were interviewed for this chapter, as they gave generously of their time, reflections, and feelings, without which we could not have attempted to capture the lived experience of doing unsettling fieldwork.
This research was sponsored by the ESRC through the University of Cambridge ESRC Doctoral Training Partnership as well as the Benavitch Foundation of St. Catharine’s College, University of Cambridge.
Citation
Claus, L., de Rond, M., Howard-Grenville, J. and Lodge, J. (2019), "When Fieldwork Hurts: On the Lived Experience of Conducting Research in Unsettling Contexts", Zilber, T.B., Amis, J.M. and Mair, J. (Ed.) The Production of Managerial Knowledge and Organizational Theory: New Approaches to Writing, Producing and Consuming Theory (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 59), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 157-172. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20190000059009
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019 Emerald Publishing Limited