Thomas Stodulka - Affective Dimensions of Fieldwork and Ethnography

This volume is a breakthroughovercoming the consensual social norm that denies the affective origins of scientists passion for knowledge. Contributions to this bookcoming from the framework of anthropologyprove to all social sciences that the basis for all new knowledge is the affective goals-oriented subjective striving by researchers who are dedicated to their fields and are ready to endure various kinds of hardships in their ways. Whether this entails anthropologists frustrations during their fieldwork or a number crunching sociologist who tries to understand how society works from meta-analyses of big data, the human affective relating with the desire to find out something new is shared across all sciences.

Maintaining the image of rationality of science is possible only through its oppositethat of the deep irrationality of the researchers who take risks of being burned on a stake or discredited for offering seemingly unrealistic ideas that, decades later, become recognized as major breakthroughs. Such passion for objectivity in science is admirable in its persistence. We find ways to experience the curious pleasure of the pain of our grant applications being turned down, submitted papers only to be rejected by journal reviewers, and our university administrators forcing upon us mundane tasks that have no connection with knowledge creation. We feel frustratedyet ready to go on, as our intellectual goals are personally, deeply crucial for us. Science is a subjective and affective solution for personal life dedication. It is a kind of liminal plane of existence from which there is no return; we can only forge ahead towards knowledge. If we are lucky and persistent in suffering through the hardships of such pilgrimages, these hardships may reach their destination. But they also can be aborted halfway, as we see promising researchers turning into administrators or perpetuators of existing knowledge.