1 ASSESSING THE RELEVANCE AND EFFECTS OF ‘KEY EMOTIONAL EPISODES’ FOR THE FIELD- WORK PROCESS PETER BERGER For a long time the role of ‘emotions’ has been acknowledged as a crucial factor in the process of fieldwork, particularly in those branches of the disci- pline in the USA and Europe that have been strongly influenced by psychol- ogy and psychoanalysis. Devereux (1967), Parin, Morgenthaler and Parin- Matthèy (1978 [1971]) as well as Nadig (1997 [1986]) are examples of the effort to introduce in various ways insights of psychoanalysis, such as the dynamics of transference, into anthropological fieldwork methods (cf. Adler 1993; Zinser 1984). Despite the influence and value of their endeavours most anthropologists without the respective training do not include these method- ological ideas in their fieldwork, which, of course, does not mean that emo- tions do not matter in their cases. Being trained in social and cultural anthro- pology without any deeper knowledge of psychology and psychoanalysis this certainly holds true in my case. However, even if lacking this particular background, an attempt is made in this paper to pay attention to ‘emotions in the field’ in a systematic way and to make a contribution to the ongoing de- bate.1 1 This contribution is based on a paper that has been presented in Oxford at the conference “Emotions in the Field: Surviving and Writing-up Fieldwork Experience” (14/15th of September 2006). It has originally been published in D. Spencer and J. Davies (eds.) 2008, Anthropology from the Heart: Fieldwork as Embodied Experi- ence. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press. Thanks are due to Michaela Schäuble and Ulrike Blindt for helpful comments on the manuscript. 1 Peter Berger Reflecting on the process of my fieldwork in highland Orissa (India) and on ‘participant observation’ elsewhere (Berger 2004) I recalled an incident, an emotional outburst on my side, in which, for a moment, the side of ‘obser- vation’ was at zero and the aspect of ‘participation’ at a maximum. In the present article, I will take this specific fieldwork experience as a starting point and try to unravel its more general implications for ethnographic re- search and understanding. More specifically, I will ask whether in the field- work process, apart from the usual emotional ups and downs, certain situa- tions stand out that have a more radical impact on the persons involved. They may open up a different perspective on the field the researcher lives in and temporarily provide an interface and meeting point of experiencing ‘self’ and ‘other’. I would suggest calling such situations ‘key emotional episodes’ (KEEs).2 The ‘keyness’ of such emotional episodes lies in the essential influ- ence they can exert on the field situation: a break-up of relations, a change of status, a change of research situation, a deepening of social ties, among other possibilities. Further, one crucial characteristic of them is that they happen without the intention of the ethnographer. They are instances when the eth- nographer has no conscious control over the situation. Rather, he has lost control and is subordinated to the flow of events. In contrast to the ideal field situation, when the mindful actions of the ethnographer are guided by his rational research aims, here, emotions and the body take over. KEEs as understood here, I assume, occur in most fieldwork processes. After I have presented, contextualized and analysed the particular incident of my field- work I want to compare it with three very different cases as reported by Timm Lau (2006), Joan Briggs (1986) and Renato Rosaldo (1984, 1989) in order to point out similarities and differences of their experiences and to assess the effects and relevance of KEEs. An example from Orissa The situation occurred at the very end of my main research period. This is significant for I would not have acted like I did in the early phases of field- 2 I coined that term using Sherry B. Ortner’s (1973) notion of ‘key symbol’ and combining it with the expression ‘emotional episode’ I picked up from a recent article of Andrew Beatty (2005). My arguments here are, however, unrelated to theirs. 2 Assessing the relevance and effects of ‘key emotional episodes’ work.3 I started my fieldwork in the highlands of central India in January 1999 and in three periods that closely followed each other I spent 21 months in the field.4 My research focussed on the rituals and festivals (their intercon- nections and the broad issues of social structure, cultivation, the person and healing that go along with it) of the Gadaba, a tribal highland society of Orissa whose death rituals have attracted the attention of various scholars such as Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf (1943), Karl Gustav Izikowitz (1969) and Georg Pfeffer (2001). I have described the process of my fieldwork in some detail elsewhere (Berger 2004, 2007: 483 ff) and will here only mention few aspects as a background for the discussion of the present topic. One of the events that particularly consolidated my position in the village was the arrival of Amrei, my German partner. I had already been living in the village for about six months when I travelled to the coast to meet her and to travel back up the hills together. To my surprise she was received as a new bride in the village and after a week we had a full fledged wedding. Since I was associated with the dominant group in the village of the totemic cobra category, Amrei was immediately associated with ‘our’ affinal group inside the village belonging to the tiger category.5 In the marriage process the respective agnatic and affi- nal groups were engaged. One of my ‘brother-in-laws’ will feature in the episode I will soon be describing. Amrei had to leave soon back to Germany and came back almost a year later to stay the last five months with me in the field. The last marriage rituals were concluded in this period. The difficulties of entering the field have to some extend been pointed out in the literature but most ethnographies I know are rather quiet on the prob- 3 Why this is the case will become clear in the course of this contribution. 4 The periods of research were three, twelve and six months with four and two months gaps in between. 5 My association with the dominant cobra group was based on my residence in their part of the village and, in particular, on sharing their food (sacrificial and every- day). In each Gadaba village one ‘clan’ category (bonso) dominates and the respective group is regarded as the “earth people”, descended from the village founders. In addi- tion, in bigger villages there permanently live some members of other categories as internal affines of the “earth people”. In the village where I lived one of these was a group belonging to the tiger category. Through this oppositional relationship Amrei was automatically integrated into this group (on the social structure of Gadaba society see Berger 2007, forthcoming). 3 Peter Berger lems of leaving it.6 The last weeks of my major research period in April 2001 were a very intense time in several respects. I was busy doing interviews and had the somewhat naïve ambition to settle all the remaining open questions in that time. As mentioned above, my wife had been with me in the field for the last five months of research and in the last two weeks we were invited by five to ten villagers’ houses each day. Such invitations always included the con- sumption of rice liquor or beer, meat and rice. Our pleading for mercy and our pretending to have bad stomachs were not sufficient to stave off the many gentle but determined requests that we consume the offered food and drink. Of course all preparations for leaving the field had to be undertaken, buying and secretly distributing gifts for example, and on top of all that came the fact that it was the time of the major village festival that lasts for about four weeks. Needless to say that the long periods of separation from my wife provided enough ground for interpersonal tensions during periods when we were suddenly closely living together in the field. On the tenth day before we left we were invited to nine households and, in the late afternoon as part of the festival, the men’s ritual hunt that was about to take place. Although I was already quite drunk by then (as a conse- quence of the previously offered/forced beer and liquor) I left my wife behind in the mud house. She had been in an upset mood and asked me to remain with her, but I felt it was my ethnographic duty to observe and participate in the ritual hunt. As we were about to leave the village someone came running up to me telling that my wife was crying loudly and that I should better go back to calm her down. I ran back annoyed that she was so demanding and that she had forced me back to the village. On arrival I saw several of our female neighbours sitting on our veranda. I rushed into the house where a loud quarrel developed between my wife and I. Obviously it reached a degree that worried the people, who were assembling outside, opened our door and came pouring in. At that moment it all became too much for me and I went off the rails, shoved the crowd out of the house so that several of them tum- bled into the yard. In a fury I kicked filled water pots off the veranda, shouted insults towards the astonished neighbours and told them to leave me alone.