Anxiety and phantasy in the field
The position of the unconscious in ethnographic research
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4848879 |
|---|---|
| Authors | J Proudfoot (0000-0002-5828-2341, University of Toronto, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 1135-1152 |
| Publication date | 2015-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0263775815598156 |
| OpenAlex | W2226065040 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 17 |
| References cited | 49 |
This article contributes to the geographical literature on reflexivity by asking what it means to take the researcher's unconscious seriously in ethnographic research, and proposes psychoanalysis as a theoretical and methodological resource for researching the unconscious dimensions of fieldwork. I begin by describing three moments from my fieldwork with panhandlers and drug users that evince the operation of the unconscious. I then review psychoanalytic work in the social sciences where the researcher becomes the object of analysis and situate the debate on psychoanalytic methodology as an extension of earlier work on reflexivity by feminist geographers. I outline three methods for investigating the unconscious dimensions of fieldwork: analysis, supervision, and case consultation. Summarizing my experiments with these methods, I discuss: the discovery that key elements of my research were inextricably connected to my own anxieties as a researcher, how analysis of a dream from early in the fieldwork revealed phantasies rooted in childhood and a profoundly ambivalent relationship to my informants, and I propose a dialectical method for incorporating the revelations of psychoanalytic reflexivity into research. I conclude by discussing some of the possibilities and consequences of taking the unconscious dimensions of fieldwork seriously
Epistemology · Ethnography · Field (mathematics · Psychoanalysis · Psychoanalytic theory · Reflexivity · Social science · Sociology · Unconscious mind · Anthropology · Data Analysis and Archiving · Participatory Visual Research Methods · Philosophy · Psychology · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics
STS Researchers as Technology
Grounding in the unconscious
Feeling ‘like a minority . . . a pathology’
A Political Ecology of Desire
Anxieties of an emerging donor
Revisiting positionality and the thesis of situated knowledge
What is in a name? How caste names affect the production of situated knowledge
Experiencing and embodying anxiety in spaces of academia and social research
Playing with Star Trek in the critical geography classroom
Negotiating racialised (un)belonging
The stakes of situated knowledges
A constructivism of desire
The psychic life of gentrification
Uneasiness in culture, or negotiating the sublime distances towards the big Other
A wizard of disquietude in our midst
Generating anxiety, short-circuiting desire
Local and Transnational Identity, Positionality and Knowledge Production in Africa and the African Diaspora
Writing Culture
Doing Qualitative Research Differently
The Lacanian Subject
Understanding feelings
Black Skin, White Masks
Emotions in the Field
Psychoanalytic Aspects of Fieldwork
Qualitative Research Interviewing
Playing the Field
The language of psychoanalysis
Gendered Racial Violence and Spatialized Justice
Situating knowledges
Psychosocial Studies and Psychology
Subjectivity, Objectivity, and Triangular Space
Practising Interpretative Geography
Doing Gender
Subjectivities, Knowledges, and Feminist Geographies
Human Agency and Human Geography Revisited
Intimate Distance
Locating the Melody of the Drives
Anthropology as Cultural Critique
Articulating Psychoanalysis and Psychosocial Studies
Psychoanalysis and Psychosocial Studies
Situated Knowledge Through Exploration
Coloring the Field
Women in the Field
Getting Personal
Geography's difficult engagement with the psychological therapies
Research Performances
Psychotopologies
Feeling insecure
Geography and psychoanalysis
The extimacy of space
The taming of psychoanalysis in geography
From Anxiety to Method in the Behavioral Sciences
Dreams of the Informant About the Researcher
Kagwahiv Mourning
Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco
Anthropology and the rise of the professional-managerial class
Becoming literate in desire with Alan Partridge
The 'impossible vanity
Research and Therapy
| Unique citing works | 17 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,89 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2024 (8) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 17 |