Abstract

Some affective trajectories in ethnographic fieldwork continuously blur the lines separating fieldwork as a personal and a professional undertaking. Field researchers often carry out the multiple tasks of sharing intimate information and engaging in caring relationship with those being studied while balancing their familial, conjugal, sexual, and amical relationships, whether they were separated by physical distance or not. The emotional impacts can be remarkably intricate and ineffable. Moreover, they are often left unexplored or even silenced in the written representation of research outcomes. Intimate attachments and caring experiences in fieldwork are however affective manifestations of relatedness.