Psychoanalytic Aspects of Fieldwork

Rational, dispassionate, an emotional outsider, someone unaffected by the field setting--these are the traditional views of the fieldworker. This view, however, is changing; recent literature has pointed to the fieldworker's own personal stake and involvement in the research setting. Now, Jennifer Hunt takes another step in this direction, showing how the fieldworker's unconscious mind often shapes the interaction between researcher, subject, and setting. The role played by affective and cogniti…