Conference Essay: Emotional Relations in Field Research

Abstract

The conference was centered on negative emotions, with a special focus on resentments and their role in qualitative research practices, methodology, and theory. Following Max SCHELER's concept of resentment and respective reflections on the term, we discussed the question of a productive way of dealing with negative emotions in ethnographic fieldwork. The contributors to the conference dealt with method- and content-related case examples from research on the New Right and social movements, as well as on working conditions in different occupational fields. In the concluding discussion a concretization of the concept of resentment in comparison to other, related emotions arose. Also explored were research issues such as the systematic reflection of one's own emotional relations, positionality in the field, and the external supervision of the research process.