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From Researcher to Human Being: Fieldwork as Moral Laboratories
Author(s) -
Wu Jinting
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
anthropology and education quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.531
H-Index - 46
eISSN - 1548-1492
pISSN - 0161-7761
DOI - 10.1111/aeq.12355
Subject(s) - ethnography , situated , sociology , field (mathematics) , moral order , environmental ethics , epistemology , social science , anthropology , philosophy , mathematics , artificial intelligence , computer science , pure mathematics
This paper explores ethnographic fieldwork as moral laboratories. Drawing upon two episodes in my field encounters in Southwest China, I illustrate the nature of our method as a form of moral striving and experimentation. Fieldwork is a stage where practical actions become vulnerable ethical dramas in search for the situated good. Fieldwork recasts the ethnographer from researcher to human being and enacts the ethics of care and moral transformation in uncertain time.