Abstract

Even though it is increasingly common for ethnographic researchers to reflect on their own emotional and relational positions in the field, the assumed “normality” of a researcher’s life is still that of a person traveling alone. This assumption is often at odds with everyday experience of and expectations toward many people in their mid-1930s who pursue a professional career and, at the same time, have a family. Based on fieldwork in the rural Philippines, the article reflects on how different notions of “normality,” be they maintained by the community or the researcher, affect emotions in research, research settings, and results. Two research situations are analyzed: That of a mother who brought her family to the field and that of an individual researcher with a second, nonvisible identity as a mother. The latter goes along with a deeper level of emotional involvement in the field. This promotes a raised awareness in observation but a tendency to overestimate the importance of one’s own social relations to research subjects. Running a family while doing participatory observation does not allow for grand emotions concerning field-relations. While limiting possibilities for research outside, it creates new opportunities for participatory observation of everyday domestic work and its emotional dimension, which easily can be overlooked by individual researchers. In both situations, everyday challenges of research such as reciprocity or questions of practical life and their corresponding emotions influence the outcome of fieldwork in a different manner.