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Researching emotions and the emotions of researching: the strange case of Alexithymia in reflexive research

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Abstract

Despite the recent 'reflexive turn' in fieldwork-based sociology, and its organisational variants, empirical research often seems to ignore the role of the researcher's emotion in the collection of data and the creation of textual representations. The paper offers a retrospective autoethnographic account to argue that the separation of the physical act of research from its emotional experience is unsustainable. The paper offers a critique of the institutional framework of PhD study, which often seems to perpetuate a certain inattention to issues of emotionality within the research context, and argues the emotional experiences are key fieldwork experiences and an essential part of ethnographic study.

Publication Date Mar 26, 2012
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal International Journal of Work Organisation and Emotion
Print ISSN 1740-8938
Publisher Inderscience
Pages 322 - 339
DOI https://doi.org/10.1504/IJWOE.2011.045969
Keywords emotions in research, retrospective/auto-ethnography, reflexivity, ethics
Publisher URL https://doi.org/10.1504/ijwoe.2011.045969

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