Abstract

This chapter reflects on a first-time ethnographer’s experience during fieldwork through the lenses of emotion and affect. Elaborating on an already well-established sense of place can emotionally disruptive and engender affects that permeate one’s fieldwork. Specifically, I draw on Raymond Michalowski’s notion of the anxiety of surveillance during fieldwork to systematically consider how and why unanticipated anxieties about safety at home may have reshaped or impeded the interpretive process between my interlocutors and me. This consideration finds that a first-time ethnographer can benefit from additional preparations towards emotionally and affectively reflexive fieldwork practices. In making this finding, the chapter provides support for the growing literature that argues that emotions can broaden and deepen an ethnographer’s insight into his interlocutor’s lives. Finally, it will posit a few practical ways to prepare for and implement increasingly “relational and affectively-aware” ethnography, in order to help diversify the toolkit of other first-time ethnographers.