Читать книгу Rainforest Asylum - Sara Ashencaen Crabtree - Страница 17

I wanted to follow up with the nurses on incidents of violence but was unable to get far. The staff sister, a handsome Iban woman, didn’t seem at all pleased to see me despite a polite but frozen half-smile and made no attempt to talk to me or make me feel welcome. She sat with her back to me the whole time and ignored me throughout. After a while of this I went out onto the veranda to strike up conversation but the other two nurses seemed unwilling or unable to talk to me (perhaps they felt the bad vibes from the sister in charge or maybe their English wasn’t up to it). These incidents made to feel unwelcome, to say the least!

I see this as all part-and-parcel of the research process and in fact research does act as both a wonderfully protective umbrella when it comes to all this negative grist to the mill. Yet there is a human dimension to all this, which I feel and is not easily shrugged off - it is this aspect in part which makes going into the field, an uncomfortable, anxiety-making business where you feel vulnerable, inquisitive - rarely wise and often foolish - an ambivalent position of unwelcome visitor and anticipated guest. As usual I often feel far more accepted by the patients than by the staff, today some seemed mildly interested and even pleased to see me.

Despite the general consent by the director to fieldwork, these examples clearly show the power held by informal gatekeepers to enable or block research activities through fairly simple but highly effective human strategies. Whilst of course, as Shaffir (1991) notes, knowing that this provides useful and additional insights for research, the discomfort generated by being made to feel something approaching a pariah acts as a significant handicap that needs to be constantly addressed and overcome. Through episodes like these I became deeply familiar with the almost ever present and heart-sinking sensations Van Maanen aptly refers to as caused by the ‘stigma of the research role’ (Van Maanen, 1991: 32).

I do not think that this feeling of stigma ever quite disappeared; and the discomfort and embarrassment of imposing myself in situations, where sometimes my welcome was qualified by many interwoven issues from many directions. All this made fieldwork fraught with nuance and expectations from patient and staff participants that often left me uncertain and anxious. Overt rejection from participants, such as the day I was spat upon by a patient, did not lower my spirits over much on reflection. More worrying was the feeling of guilt, helplessness and loss of control in the face of so much pathos and so many direct appeals for my help, my understanding or my allegiance, according to the agenda of my interlocutor. My own attitude to fieldwork was therefore often ambivalent, and there were days when only stringent self-discipline drove me forward, regardless of how experience had shown me I might feel by the end of a working day in the field, sometimes elated, satisfied, angry or depressed.