Transcript

Jerika Loren Heinze (JLH) [00:00]: To me, auto-reflexivity is this question, and this, this toll, as we say in the in the article title, that we need to gauge and ask, “What impact could this work have on me, or has this work had on me?” What was the human cost? Or could be the human cost?

[00:18] [AnthroPod theme music, “All the Colors in the World” by Podington Bear]

Daillen Culver (DC) [00:33]: From the Society for Cultural Anthropology, this is AnthroPod. I’m Daillen Culver, independent scholar and contributing editor at AnthroPod, and today we’re discussing the practice of auto-reflexivity and the challenges to personal safety that anthropologists and researchers from a variety of disciplines may face while conducting fieldwork. As any anthropologist can attest, fieldwork is rarely straightforward. Challenges exist on a spectrum, sometimes uncomfortable or inconvenient and sometimes disorienting, destabilizing, or even deeply traumatic. Different aspects of identity, power, and structural inequality can amplify exposure to harm and shape how we navigate the field. Auto-reflexivity was established in the anthropological lexicon on the back of the reflexive turn, a period in the 1990s when feminist methodologies mainstreamed the practice of reflexivity. If reflexivity asks, “How do I as a researcher imprint upon my research?” auto-reflexivity asks, “How does my research imprint upon me as a human being?” This episode is the first of a series on the risks and vulnerabilities that come with field-based research broadly defined, and the often invisible emotional labor that ethnographic work demands.

We’re joined today by Jerika Loren Heinze. Jerika is a lecturer in anthropology, a writer, and a trauma specialist. She is also the founder of The Fieldwork Initiative, a grassroots network with over 3,500 members dedicated to supporting researchers and students facing trauma, unsafe conditions, or sexual harassment and assault during research fieldwork. They maintain a robust network for victims and lead original pre-fieldwork training seminars, also known as the FIEST Training [Fieldwork Initiative Ethics and Safety Training]. She travels all over the world to advocate for fieldwork safety and create new academic norms that prioritize wellness. She is an advocate for foster youth in academia, and her own research in the Balkans looks at the experiences of youth in crisis.

[02:36] Please note this episode contains reference to sexual harassment and gender violence. We know these are confronting topics that may directly impact some of our listeners. Please take care of yourself. If you or someone you know requires further support, please reach out to your university’s counseling service or a qualified mental health professional. The Fieldwork Initiative also provides support via WhatsApp and email, and you can find more information on their website. That’s www.fieldworkinitiative.org.

So, welcome Jerika. Thank you so much for being here. 

JLH [03:17]: Thank you for having me. 

DC [03:19]: I gave the audience a little taster. But can you just quickly summarize your research for us in your own words and tell us how you came to study the experiences of Balkan youth?

JLH [03:30]: Oh, yeah, my own research looks at crisis. I’ve come to look at crisis and trauma in many different avenues, but in that particular work, the doctorate work, looks at after the economic crisis in the Balkans and specifically in the Greek region, how young people navigated this sudden change in their life pathway and their sudden change in their trajectory, and especially under the guise of this prescription of how to procure a middle-class life for most young folks in the nation, particularly people coming from rural backgrounds. So [for] many people in the history of the Balkans, is quite common that young people become educated in the cities or the urban centers the metropolis, and then often travel abroad. Or they stay there and build up, you know, their their life, their careers, and such. And so this was quite a big interruption of that path. And so I was looking at how that’s being handled, and what, you know, creative methods folks use, or how they just really struggle with it, and how those realities look.

DC [04:40]: And how did you get interested in that to begin with?

JLH [04:43]: Yes, I was always interested in youth in crisis, part of my advocacy with foster youth, or in general, folks [who] have marginalized backgrounds and how they go about overcoming barriers. And you know, the in the troika of race, class, and gender, all of these many, many, you know, there’s so many different avenues in which people navigate the world and its many, you know, institutions of power. And so I was always interested in looking at this, especially in youth, because they’re situated at a bit of a already disadvantage, right, and in the world. And so I worked a lot with, I’d say, at-risk youth or troubled youth, or youth, you know, in academia, who’ve been historically absent. And so it very much developed in anthropology, and so, you know, looking at economics, at debt, looking at moral debt, looking at kinship, all of these types of things. And so with the help of many mentors, it culminated into this project.

DC [05:46]: So how did you or didn’t you factor your positionality into your methodology and your risk assessment before you went to the field?

JLH [05:55]: Oh, yeah, what a great question, because there really was not a risk assessment for myself. As somebody, as well, who has, you know, doesn’t, didn’t have a lot of mentors in higher education, and in general, wasn’t sure my, you know, this is, you know, historically, this has been a place for children of elites and such and high-up, you know, lot of navigating of different cultures, and the one in academia, which we’ve talked about a lot. And I know, you know, obviously we’re having a culmination moment where this is a larger discussion, but at that time, the idea of, am I going to be okay? Or, what should I wonder? Or, is this going to be safe for me, all of those things really were not brought up. It was about the importance of getting the data. You are have this one opportunity, if you’re going to make, you know, you especially if you’re an unfunded scholar or a scholar that’s a bit of a dark horse at the, you know, in your position, the importance was always simply on getting this research done, doing it. And if that meant putting yourself in difficult positions as well, you don’t have a right to say, hey, I don’t want to do this. You need to get that data. So there was really no notion of subjectivity except my awareness of how I as a person might taint the data. Of the kinds of questions I might ask, you know, especially as an ethnographer, awareness about my own cultural background, not letting, or, you know, being aware of how that can bleed into my own, how I live these realities which I’ll then come to write about objectively or attempt to so the idea that, you know, the subjectivity I teach and talk about now, it was very different than my own,

DC [07:40]: This focus, this laser focus on getting the data at any cost: Did you see that perpetuated in supervision, meetings, in readings, in conversations with peers? Where were you hearing that kind of language reproduced?

JLH [07:56]: Oh, yeah, all over. It was, it was subtle. You know, of course, nobody said, you know, it doesn’t matter if your life’s at risk, Jerika, do this, but we perceive it. You know, we’re such human beings, we’re so keen on on absorbing these cultural norms. I didn’t only sense it in the way that only conversations were about the, you know, getting the methodologies perfect and securing the funding, and, of course, even being told that, you know, if you want to get funded, you’re going to have to take risks on danger and topics, or, you know, put yourself out there. But I also just saw the way people talked, going to conferences as a young scholar, seeing how trauma stories and stories about struggle were celebrated, collecting war stories in the field was celebrated, and then really putting those pictures, you know, putting that together for myself and digesting it as the expectation. I didn’t hear anyone else talk about harassment, talk about, you know, struggles, practical. I didn’t know I hear anybody else talk about not having resources and having to create them, even if that means doing something that’s going to be dangerous. And those were conversations that were rarely had. So I assumed that this was a blind spot in my awareness that I had to just, you know, come what may endure or figure out and manage on my own. And that’s kind of how fieldwork, as well, as a practice is, it’s very hands off. So, you know, make it happen no matter what. And no complaints. There’s also this hyper focus on, on how, almost, sort of the way that I feel like, for young scholars, are almost taunted with scenarios. How are you going to handle what if this happens? What if it goes wrong? How do we know you're going to stay the full year in the field? How do we know you’re going to, what are you going to do to prove to us that you can handle it?

[09:47] And that real sort of, you know, I think they call it, you know, acclimation by fire or whatnot, that, like light, general hazing that happens to folks. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that very much is, I would say it in its most abrupt form of seeing that, not just in myself, but with peers in, you know, that sort of that culture was highly palpable. And I think that’s where it was kind of absorbed in many veins and many avenues.

DC [10:20]: Before going to the field, planning out your research, did you consider your field site to be particularly “dangerous”? I’m putting dangerous in air quotes. Or did you feel like your research plan was particularly risky?

JLH [10:38]: See, that’s so interesting, because now that I have the insights and experiences now, I would say absolutely, I didn’t know what I was doing. I don’t know who allowed me, you know, who, not that, you know, I would, that somebody should have the capacity to tell a young scholar, no, you can’t do that. But there was really no conversation whatsoever. And now, and I just assumed, since nobody said anything, since my advisors, who have much more experience, and everyone else, is giving me the green light, telling me to go out there and do that, I just assumed, of course, it was going to be okay. I, you know, wasn’t going to somewhere that I was an active war zone or anything like that, in the traditional sense of how we come to perceive danger in the West. And so I did not, I was not given any cues that I should take particular, you know, caution, other than just being, you know, a woman of the world who traveled quite extensively and is aware of cultural difference as an anthropologist and is aware of these things and as navigating the world. I didn’t, I wasn’t aware of how this would become particularly difficult when I’m trying to produce research in an area, and that power, how that power dynamic as it happens on the ground would look, and how that was uniquely different than, say, going anywhere you’ve been, and just moving through the world in that place, right? So, yeah, that I would say I would, I did not know to think of it as such. And now I think totally different when I look back...

DC [12:10]: Yeah, hindsight 2020, right. And to whatever degree you feel comfortable sharing, what are some of the challenges that you faced when you got to the field during your fieldwork? And how did you navigate those?

JLH [12:26]: Yeah, so again, being a scholar of very modest background and unfunded, you know, having this really be, if you’ve collected the resources, now is your chance to do it, and you have to strike while the iron is hot, so that being this, this desperation capital, right, that that was sort of behind the sentiment and the stress of that, feeling like, come what may, no matter what this has to get done. Also in not understanding the dynamics of power, as I mentioned, in mentorship, going and working with local gatekeepers, who I have no idea, you know, their background, their relationships with the community, and how those can come to create difficulties. That gatekeeping can be so difficult to navigate, as it was for me, being told that if you go out on your own, you’re going to be harassed, and you might, it’s dangerous. But then if that gatekeeper is also perpetrating harassment or uncomfortable situations on you, or dominance, or, you know, abuse in some way of their power, you really feel like you’re, you know, there’s an inexplicable, where to move, what to do then, right? So, facing harassment from an advisor, facing it, then, if I try to leave that situation, from local people, and not realizing and understanding the dynamics of that space and the danger, inherently, even just on the border areas that there was, you know, it was a highly militarized area I was working in, in a moment of of a very, you know, high conflict. 

[14:26] I was also working in an area where there was a lot of local political activities that became very difficult, a lot of of political unrest in that area, in a rural sense. And I was really unfamiliar with what that could look like. You know, if you’re walking down the road in a very, very rural area, and somebody pulls up and it’s the only car you’ve seen in forty-five minutes, an hour, and they say, get in. I’ll give you a ride. And you say, no, thank you. You know, I’m okay. And they’re like, nope, get in. It’s fine, trust me, this, just get in. And they really won’t leave you alone, and they’re not taking a no, and there’s no one around, right? Like this type of danger that started to emerge where I realized, I’m equally as dangerous outside of this umbrella of this advisor who themself is dangerous as well. And then when it ultimately culminates, you know, and we’re talking about harassment from random people, not just because, you know, obviously it’s somebody from, you know, obviously understand, if you’re in a rural area and you’ve not seen somebody, you know, there’s not a lot of people out there. And then here’s somebody that looks completely, you know, is completely quite foreign and unfamiliar. Obviously, people are going to get involved and look. But there was a lot of almost, it almost felt like in some of the rural places, I became a form of entertainment for harassment, when people, you know, it became something to do for people, because it was very, the risk in being somewhere that didn’t have accessible busses and was hyper rural was sort of built in as part of what was going to make the research special and fundable, and it ultimately came around in the realities of what that looks [like] for a researcher, that’s actually the personal tax that individual has to take on in doing that type of work that, for the first time, became understood and real to me. And so that type of experience was very difficult to navigate. Then to have, at that same time, you know, be reaching out to folks back in, you know, in my home, university, or in multiple avenues, and asking, what am I supposed to do? This is really dangerous. 

[16:26] I had these experiences. I’ve been, you know, I’ve had people try to get me to stay in their house overnight, to do the interview in the morning, because I suddenly felt tired, and now they want me to stay and have a drink with them, or, you know, just certain things that didn’t feel safe. And most responses I got from women’s organizations or anthropological societies was like, oh, sorry to hear about that. Good luck with that. If anything happens, you know, go to the police. And that is absolutely what did happen. When something finally happened, the only thing I had to do was follow the rules of what I was being told. I was very afraid that there was going to be some sudden decision that, oh, I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to. How come I hadn’t gotten all the data I needed to. There was, you know, we always want to put our best foot forward, right, with our advisors at our home university, so, wanting them to think everything’s okay. And, ultimately, following the rules. And I did exactly what they told me to do. I went to the police when this ultimately culminated into an assault. And it was very clear that I needed my, I needed his, I needed proof this happened, right? I’m just some random person that showed up. And this person is very deeply embedded into this, the local area, and is very, very well known in anthropology, in academia. And, you know, this is, like, a lot of layers here of complexity. So I recorded a phone conversation with me and this individual, took it to local police, and said, this is, I’m being, you know, held in this way and threatened, and it’s a, this has taken place.

[18:26] And they immediately told me I was under arrest. That it was illegal to record something without, you know, record someone without them knowing in that country, and that they weren’t even going to listen to the tape, because it didn’t matter what's on there, I just admitted to committing a crime. And so I honestly, at that moment, the sudden experience I was having of this difficulty just fell away, and all of a sudden I was in an even bigger world of just shock, hurt, and trauma. I could not believe what to do next. I didn’t know what to do next. And I just specifically remember leaving that police station that day fully believing I would never, ever, ever tell anyone what had just happened to me. Like, oh my gosh, the idea that my home, my advisors and folks that had given me scholarships and funded me and believed in me, would hear that I almost, you know, I was arrested in my fieldwork. Oh, my goodness, like, I could not let that happen. So I went right back into the field. I endured that harassment and that difficulty, up until a moment where another researcher, Dr. Suzanne Eaton, working nearby, we learned was missing. And I, when I first heard she was missing, I remember just being in that area and how walking long roads in the rural. Like it’s, that, for me, felt like—I don’t, I don’t say that’s inherently dangerous, by the way. I don’t ever want to place any space or country as dangerous, because I don’t believe that. It’s ultimately individual humans who make their decisions, right. And so, but that, that experience I had, I felt, there were many times I almost feel afraid looking back, thinking how easily things like that happened to me, and what could have come of it. And so, when we heard that Dr. Eaton had been killed, and that she had been sexually assaulted, running on a rural road in that area where we had all had so many experiences. And again, when I say we, I mean, you know, meeting for conferences about Balkan ethnography and folks, in the bathroom, you know, talking about, are you okay? What’s going on? And hearing these stories, these whisper network stories, knowing that this wasn’t just, you know, that for the first time, realizing this is an issue of life or death. This is very serious, and that we did not have any tools. There were no resources to talk about this or to even have conversations, and that we also need each other greatly. 

[20:26]: We need each other, as people who’ve had these experiences and understand and that we’re putting our foot down about the types of culture that have made this, what a natural conversation about trauma and safety, the culture that has really pushed that aside, and not only pushed it aside, but almost made it taboo to talk about. That was the first moment all of these experiences, just sort of, you know, exploded into, you know, exploded into our life, all up over everything, and it became impossible to no longer be part of it. And that’s how The Fieldwork Initiative actually began. We started as a whisper network for people after Dr. Suzanne Eaton had gone missing, talking, is everybody okay? Are we going to, you know, watching, making sure people are getting home. You know, sharing location on WhatsApp, all of these things. And I guess that was a very long winded answer, Daillen, but this was sort of how my own experience, just as a researcher, was almost co-opted by these experiences of trauma in the field, and culminated now into the work I do, which is different than my work as a researcher.

DC [21:12]: That is something that no researcher should have to go through and I’m really grateful for your willingness to share. Unfortunately, this kind of experience, or some derivative of it, happens to far too many researchers, and that was part of our impetus in making this episode, was to demystify some of the challenges of fieldwork and really raise awareness around the need to consider these kinds of risks ahead of time, even if one is not departing to a quote-unquote “dangerous” field site. I loved what you said about, no site is inherently dangerous. It is so up to the person and the researcher and the people that you encounter. It’s so situational. You actually wrote [a Fieldsights] article for the Society of Cultural Anthropology, who sponsors this podcast, entitled “Gauging the Toll: Auto-reflexivity, Sexual Violence and Fieldwork.” And if it’s okay with you, I just want to read the first paragraph, because I think it’s really powerful and kind of conveys what you are speaking about in sharing your fieldwork experience.

[22:26] So you say:

“In Letters from the Field, Margaret Mead wrote, ‘The way to do fieldwork is to never come up for air until it is all over.’ This quotation demonstrates the chaotic feeling of drowning associated with the cultural immersion, lack of clear structure, and uncertainty that characterizes fieldwork for many anthropologists. This quote, however, takes on a different meaning for those whose risk in the field goes far beyond the ‘normal’ aches and pains of academic turbulence. While fieldwork can be exciting, demoralizing, illuminating, confusing, and transformative, it can also be violent and traumatic. Since The Fieldwork Initiative began two years ago [that would be several more than two years now], we have learned that the latter is much more commonplace than most grasp, or are willing to consider. We have also learned that while trauma takes many shapes, its damages are compounded by structural inequalities within academia as its existence as a dimension of fieldwork is often denied by faculty members and university administrations.

You go on in that article to argue for auto-reflexivity as a necessary complement to any reflexive practice. So I’d be curious to know, how do you personally define auto-reflexivity, or like, what does it mean to you?

JLH [23:49]: To me, auto-reflexivity is this question, and this this toll, as we say in the article title, that we need to gage, and ask, what impact could this work have on me, or has this work have on me? What was the human cost, or could be the human cost, of the emotional experience, maybe what you’ve encountered traumatically, maybe even just existentially, [of] the work you’re doing? What is the cost on the individual? We’ve always asked, what is our, you know, influence on the data, but we’ve not yet asked, what’s the influence upon us in these experiences? And even just, I almost want to interrupt myself in saying that, by, I always remind myself, when I think about auto-reflexivity, we have no idea how many people have left the field because of these experiences, and so we’ve not even asked, how has academic, you know, culture, impacted individuals? That’s been a question that’s kind of gone quite—obviously, I know there’s scholars of academia and such, but that kind of question, just on a baseline level, we we rarely ask it even for ourselves, what’s been asked of me, what’s been the toll been on me? Because the culture has always been handed to us, that one, we have to be lucky to be here. There’s somebody else, just quickly as easily, can take our place, especially if you’re from a historically marginalized background, and people, you know, there’s not folks that look like you or are from backgrounds like you, or have that gap in some of the knowledge that comes with it, or the financials, right, not have any funding, and have to work and all of these things. 

[25:49] And that, that kind of a question could say, or that kind of a, you know, that could come up by saying something like, we’ve seen scholars say, hey, you know, this fieldwork took place during a two-year pandemic, and I was locked in the field amidst a constant fear of a virus, or, you know, either contracted myself or, you know, passing it on to someone. We might see an auto-reflexivity in an assessment about, hey, I was in the field for a year and I didn’t see my child, or, you know, something like that. These types of real questions where we ask what impact the work has on us, to where we are starting to be seen as a resource of science, just like our data, right? Yes, humans, the human power, the actual human toll of the work, I think, is very, very important to measure. We’ve done a great disservice in not measuring it, just, not only for researchers, right, and understanding the price they’ve paid, and the risk they’ve taken and what they’ve given to the work, but also in not having a larger understanding, as scientists, about the outcomes of this work, the outcomes of research, what it can—you know, we can’t just have our blinders on and say, only data. You know, data only. So, yeah, it’s many things, but it’s, I think, first and foremost for me, it’s being able to have that existential conversation, introspectively with ourselves: What toll could this have on me, in many, you know, many aspects of the work.

DC [27:02]: Yeah, I love the question you raised around, how many people have left academia because of these kinds of experiences, and in your case, experiences that might have been preventable had you had some information ahead of time, or someone who had advised you to take action earlier. You know, how many brilliant minds has anthropology and academia more broadly, lost to these kinds of preventable traumas in the field? You mention in the article also the kind of systemic denial of trauma as a very commonplace dimension of the fieldwork experience and a fixture in a lot of academic institutions. Do you find that to be as true today as it was during your fieldwork? Have you seen any kinds of shifts?

JLH [27:55]: Yeah, I think there have been, there are so many amazing people who’ve always been doing this work. We’ve just been kept from them, right? Because, you know, they’ve been marginalized and not always given, you know, their work hasn’t always been handed to us and then in the mainstays of our education. So this work has been been done for a long time, but I didn’t, I was completely unaware. Because when you come into the academy as a young scholar, you are, as I said previously, it’s so focused on the importance of you learning how to do what you need to do, and impress every everything by getting it done and showing yourself, proving yourself capable. So I think that obviously, we’ve had a “me too” movement. We’ve had an explosion of experiences and access to these things, a lot of cultural triggers. But, I believe that we’re talking more about it. But I don’t know if I can say yet that tangibly, you know, it’s happening less or more resources. I think the conversation is definitely much more available, right? I see so many new “me too” academia groups popping up, or survivor groups. Every time that happens, I just like, have this little, like, internal high five, because when so many of us are everywhere, they can’t, it no longer can be denied, right? And so I think there’s, there’s so much happening, but there’s still so much needed. There’s still so much. We need, you know, we’ve given this work, we’ve placed this work on the backs of unfunded, unsupported survivors to carry as part of their, you know, overcoming trauma. You know, we really need a lot more from institutions higher up, institutions who historically have even, you know, continued to protect folks who we know have been, you know, predators in academia and such. 

[29:55] So we need a lot more, but I am always excited when, about this moment we’re in. We’re talking about these things much more. These types of conversations, Daillen, have been historically absent in knowledge production for the longest time. And when folks did come out and speak about it, they were sort of just pushed aside and delegitimized and sort of ousted in a way that, that, I think now it feels a bit safer. I don’t want to say that arrogantly, because I know many people, there’s so many risks, obviously, survivors take on so many risks. But I think I, as a person and as a scholar, just as someone in the world, I now know of much more than than was it available ten years ago. So I would say yes and no.

DC [30:31]: Well, it’s nice to hear that there are some signs of shifts in the right direction, in the direction toward keeping researchers safe and holding people accountable, holding institutions accountable. What would you say to researchers who are interested in auto-reflexivity as a framework for analyzing safety and risk in their own fieldwork, but aren’t sure how to negotiate personal safety alongside the pressure to produce a comprehensive ethnography or retrieve high quality data?

JLH [31:06]: Absolutely, yeah, that’s such—I almost have two answers, because the radical, sort of enthusiastic, shattering-the-toxic-culture side of me says: The first thing to ask yourself, do I feel safe and okay doing this? Am I being forced to silence some inner risk I feel, or intuition that I don’t actually want to do this or it doesn’t feel safe? That is the most important thing, honoring that intuition, and you being at the seat of choosing and being able to say no to things that don’t feel right for you, should always be a hundred percent. That’s what it needs to be, and it hasn’t been. However, at that same time, I know that’s not necessarily helpful to say that, because the reality is, when we’re out there in the field, that pressure is immense. Oh my goodness, the idea that we could just disregard it, it’s almost like telling someone in the midst of their anxiety attack, just breathe and calm down, right? It’s like, no, when we’re in that moment of high stress, sometimes even when we look back, it’s just survival. Many survivors look back and go, why didn’t I just say, excuse me, you’re harassing me. I don’t have to endure this. Or, hey, you’re not treating me respectfully, or I’m being overworked. I don’t have to do this. The reason they wonder, why didn’t I say anything? You know, obviously, I don’t want to, you know, oversimplify, but well, we often feel people have this emotion. The reason is because they aren’t actually living in their veins, all of those chemical stress reactions happening. In reality, when you’re in the field, things aren’t going well, you don’t feel safe, you’re being told what to do, there’s emails are coming in, hey, where’s the update on the research outcomes? 

[33:06] That almost takes this superhuman strength, I know, to assume we could just go, oh, well, whatever, my needs first. So what, in a more realistic way, I encourage folks to do these types of assessments beforehand. And this is the pressure I put, even on institutions and universities and faculties. We do not want to wait until a student is in the field or a researcher is in the field for something to happen and it be the first time they have to come to grips with it. Having a scaffolding of information beforehand, having this kind of conversation beforehand, with an advisor or with anyone: Hey, what happens if something goes wrong? What, you know, what have you seen can happen? What kinds of plurality, if we need to, you know, if I get there and realize it’s not a place I feel comfortable staying the night, or whatever it might be. And so, I would say, doing that sort of work that institutions need to do to help this not just be put on scholars is needed, but also to have folks that when, when researchers and students are in that moment, if they feel overwhelmed, they do not have to be the one to hit that button for intervention. Because that can be very hard, very hard. Knowing that help exists outside of—you know, they can just email us and tell us a need they have, and they don’t even need to tell us, you know, any details that they don’t want to divulge. They let us know what they need, and we go about trying to get it for them. So there’s a lot of plural support that I think I want folks to be aware of exists. Historically, it’s only been reporting, right, if something went bad. Or walking away. So there’s many more plural forms of navigation, amidst struggle and difficulty, amidst pressure, and also knowing you will be supported. There is a community of 2,500 other survivors of fieldwork trauma. They’ve been there. They know why it’s so difficult that they can support you and guide you and not just say, and answer, like, oh, just ignore it, or, oh, he’s, you know, they’re just old school, that’s how they are, you know, some sort of excuse. So there’s a lot more plural ways that folks can be supported in managing, and even if that means, you know, finding a different advisor, we have a network, we can help go about that. So, and again, not just the work we’re doing. There are so many other amazing organizations. FieldFutures is having amazing trainings, you know, the PRIDE Network.

[35:05] Realizing that when we’re in a small community at our university, be that, again, not just a university, maybe a research hub or whatnot, but we feel that very strong sense of loyalty, that pressure, like we can’t say anything about what’s going on. We have to put the smile on. But you have a right to reach out and connect with every community that exists, especially ones that have lived this experience. And it is completely okay for you to get plural, other forms of support and step outside of your employer or your research, you know, university, to get that done, right. And we just really want folks to know they’re part of this community. And so again, if they’re going out in the field and they’re struggling with this, connecting, and, you know, thinking about how we can really, each one of us, learn to nurture saying no and having boundaries. It’s, every time you say, no, I’m not comfortable doing that, and it violates my boundary here in this work, it makes it safer for me to do that. Right? So, this, like, mutual signaling we do together when folks can—it really can be empowering for folks in this moment. So I say, find each other. Find us. Find one another. Reach out, create your own, right? So just really not allowing academia to put a researcher or a victim, survivor, whatnot, in that little box and say, everything’s fine, just keep going on, or your career is at risk and your education is at risk. Exploding out of that, because that’s just simply, that, we’re just not accepting that anymore.

DC [36:41]: No, we’re past that. Those days are behind us.

JLH [36:46]: We’re not doing it anymore.

DC [36:49]: I was really struck by your kind of conflict around wanting to blast open that paradigm and also understanding that, like you said, when we get to the field, so much of it is going to be outside of our comfort zone, and so those innate threat detection faculties are going to be going haywire, and it can make it really difficult to discern between something that is a genuine threat and something that just feels really new and scary and uncomfortable, especially if you are working in certain field sites with unfamiliar participants, challenging topics, etcetera, etcetera. I would love to hear more about The Fieldwork Initiative and why you launched it, and how people can access this network that you’ve been talking about. And I know that as part of The Fieldwork Initiative, you guys have developed this signature curriculum, the FIEST curriculum, correct? Can you share a bit about how you developed that, and maybe some of your key tips and tricks to have listeners take away with them?

JLH [38:05]: Absolutely, yes, yes. The training sort of came about as a natural, well, what do we do with this information? Right? In academia, we have such a loss of institutional knowledge when somebody moves on, graduates, travels, and that feeling like, again, we’re not allowed to liberally talk about these things, because it seems like it would be almost threatening our prospects of our future career. You know, we don’t, obviously, if we want to work in these same institutions, how can we feel safe talking about the ways that they might be causing harm?

So The Fieldwork Initiative essentially began in the context that I spoke on earlier about the loss of Dr. Suzanne Eaton, the realization that this is life or death potentially, and that we’ve not been given, that no resources really exist for folks in the field as we’ve lived, because most of us have just gotten a reply or just said, hey, good luck with that. Hope it works out. So it started as initially, just connect, collecting data, but it wasn’t even thought of as data at that time. It was just trying to figure out, what’s the climate of what’s been going on here, interviewing survivors of fieldwork trauma, having conversations and asking them three questions, mainly. The first one, what were your experiences? What happened? The next one, what, you know, strategies—what do you wish you would have known before going into the field, before that situation happened, that would have helped you, or that you just wish would have, what information would have been helpful for you that you never received? And then the third question is, what now? How do you navigate the field now, with what, you know, knowing what you know, or having the experiences you’ve had, what strategies have helped you? And so, gathering that information, it became a big corpus of information, many overlapping narratives. From fifty-year difference, right? We have, we have almost—it was amazing how plural this experience was. Almost every time I give the training anywhere, no matter what country or what university or what setting, people want to come up and talk to me after. And it’s not because they want to always give feedback on the training. It’s because they want to tell me what happened to them. So many stories we’ve never heard before, people, you know, generations prior to us, all over different settings. So this information felt like such vital and important, nourishing information to stop the cycle of trauma. Because, again, we don’t just want to wait ’til something happens to try to fix it in the aftermath. We want to prevent this. 

[40:05] This is a structural problem. [It] did not start with me and you, and it’s going to continue on if it doesn’t, you know, if we don’t approach it in that manner. So the first thought was, oh, my goodness, this information needs to go to something that we share, that we, you know, loop through as part of our knowledge, so that when folks go into the field, they they have heard before, oh yeah, fieldwork trauma can happen. And so if it happens to you, it’s not like, you know, completely unheard of, that you’re left alone with it.

So this culminated into a training. So we, basically—the first part of the training is usually about two hours, although we’ve given the full training one day, one time, at a—we had the ability to give it, and it took over two days of a conference. So you can imagine how rich it is. A lot of info. And we talk first about the history of fieldwork, how structurally these things have come to happen, that this has been designed in this way, because this was designed for a, you know, academy of elites from the West and how the academies have formed, that the practices and the approach of fieldwork has not just been by happenstance, it’s been naturalized as simply how things are. But in fact, there are so many embedded barriers and disadvantages from people of all kinds of backgrounds that have made it inaccessible. So we talk about that logistical knowledge, that history, that theory. And then the second half of the training is, okay, you know what, what happens if you’re in the field and something happens? And what are strategies? And we just share so many different plural strategies, and with the constant reminder that there’s no one strategy that’s perfect or that you have to use, even no strategy at all is okay. And we really as well talk about trauma, we teach about trauma and what what it actually does in our brain, how it feels when it’s happening.

[42:05] And one of the main takeaways of the training—I always like, I swear, if I could get just like one of those flyer planes and write it in the sky, I would. People think trauma is some big happening, like they’ve seen in a movie or a film, you know, someone pulls out a gun on you in your fieldwork, or that you were in a fire or something like that. And, of course, yes. But in fact, the clinical definition of trauma as we experience it is any form of chronically feeling unsafe, even if it’s not, even if it never happens. And that means wondering, is today the day that he’s going to come into my room at night because I don’t have a locking door in these dorms, or is today, you know, going to be the day that they humiliate me in front of the team? And my last strain of wellness just shatters here, and I’m 5,000 miles away from home in the middle of nowhere, in my field site, in the snow. Or, you know, it can look so different. And I really want to ask all field workers and anyone, I mean, how many folks just haven’t had these experiences where you’ve had some long term feeling unsafe, even if that meant precariousness of your job, feeling unsafe about the work you’re doing. Is it going to be okay, what you what you hand in? Are you going to be treated, you know, poorly for what work you’ve produced? So it’s very, very, very plural. Emotionally feeling okay, even socially, it can be very difficult, even in circles with academic folks, of feeling like we can’t translate who we are, that can be very traumatic for folks. And so, just understanding that plurality and really getting that awareness into folks so that they’re much kinder, that they’re much, they have much more understanding about trauma to help them push away and resist this very toxic culture that’s been placed on all of us, that tells us to reproduce it or everything is at threat with our status in this institution, right, either be it academia or research. So I’d say the training has many, many desires, desired outcomes.

[44:26] But I would say, beyond just understanding about trauma and realities and strategies of what can be done and what help exists, we want researchers and students to know that none of these things are a result of your own shortcomings as a person, as a researcher. None of these, you know—mishaps in the field are not because you didn’t do what you’re supposed to. And a lot of times that’s what survivors feel: Oh no, maybe I somehow went, you know, awry in some way. I didn’t approach it correctly. Which is wrong. Getting the data should never have to be a necessary evil for any project. There is no book deal, there’s no dissertation, there’s no grant or scholarship, there’s no one science thing that is so important that you as a human being should have to endure any form of trauma. And the way that has been normalized and packaged in academia, we’re ripping, you know, the sheet off and exposing it. Everyone in the room gasps, and oh my goodness, this is what we’ve been living with? That is something we really want to empower folks to move, you know, sit down and want to walk away from, because it has not served us. It’s really been a heavy, you know, really been heavy emotionally for researchers and just the pressure of the work. Also understanding that research is incredibly plural as well. Most folks think early scholars think, oh my gosh, if I get to the field and things aren’t exactly as I intended and had to foresee, and this methodology isn’t working exactly, everything’s been lost. And teaching folks, hey, you know what? You can go out into the field. Every single thing goes wrong. You know, as anthropologists, maybe no one talks to us, nobody’s willing to. We don’t get any of our samples. You know, we don’t even, you know, we’re barred from any of the cultural activities, we’re not allowed to participate, and any of that can happen. And guess what? That’s a wonderful thesis or dissertation or article about the barriers of getting research. There does not have to be any smoking gun, right? So we really want to dispel a lot of these pressures that have been handed to scholars to maximize their output and their productivity.

[46:05] And we really want to slash through that and say your worth as a human being is not what you produce here, and your brilliance as a scholar is so much bigger than these hoops were made to jump through by academies that were put in place that didn’t seek the needs of folks like us. So a lot to say, but there’s a lot of grandiose outcomes of the training in the symbology as well, but mainly in just giving folks strategies as well, realistic strategies. What can happen, what to do if this happens? And also, by the way, none of it is because you willed it. And I think that can really be hope. We hope that it gives, throws a lifeline, or a, you know, just a little place in somebody’s memory, where, if they’re ever in the field and something happens, they remember, oh yeah, that one time that training, and they know that help exists.

DC [47:17]: Yeah, it’s almost like rehumanizing the fieldwork process, and I love that you guys address the many manifestations of trauma, just educating people on how trauma can come about. I think that word “trauma” has been kind of co-opted by pop culture these days and everything and anything is referred to as quote-unquote  “traumatic.” And it is true that trauma is far ranging, and what’s traumatic for me might not be traumatic for you, but I think it is so important to highlight the compounding effects of this kind of death-by-one-thousand-cuts trauma. I remember, you know, I’ve lived and worked in Guatemala intermittently for the last ten years, and when I first moved to Guatemala, I was only twenty-one. I was at quite a precarious stage of my life after a major bereavement, and the constant harassment that I received walking around on the street—it’s nothing new for anyone who has traveled there, or who has spent, most women who spend a significant amount of time in Latin America are familiar with the kind of chisme that gets hurled at you on the street. It’s not uncommon, but the toll that it took day after day, and then being mugged at knifepoint was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back, and I didn’t have any kind of acute event. But it wasn’t until years later, when I moved to Scotland, where you hardly ever get catcalled on the street, that I started to feel safe and I realized how tightly wound my nervous system was. I couldn’t even look at people walking by me in the eye on the street. I was, like, constantly in this fight-flight state. And it wasn’t until years later that I realized the kind of toll that had taken in those formative years and could start working on it. And I forced myself to look people in the eye and to assume the best in people, rather than kind of building that shell around myself. And that, too, takes its toll on personal relationships, on research relationships. So these are all such important conversations.

JLH [49:34]: I’m thinking just for you Daillen, because you’re such a stellar anthropologist and interviewer, like just what you shared, to be somebody who is always absorbing into others and curious to know more, a people person in every sense of the word, the toll of you to then have the trauma where you feel unsafe even looking at people on the street. I mean, that’s almost robbed you of some of the spirit of your work, right? And that being a cost placed on you, I really appreciate that example, because it really shows how these things can look and they can take, like you’ve said years later, suddenly you have this realization...

DC [50:18]: Yeah, yeah. Sometimes you don’t realize until years later. What are a few key tips that you can leave listeners with for how to begin cultivating their own auto-reflexive practice? And then, separately, what do you think universities and institutions can do for anthropologists to encourage this kind of auto-reflexivity?

JLH [50:48]: Yes, I would say to first be aware, because, like you said, it was a few years where your own realizations came up. I think folks—and what we know, actually I won’t say I think—what we know is that for many folks, doing this work of auto-reflexivity was heavy and difficult when they took stock of all the things they’ve been through, almost like looking on paper as a list of of experiences, and asking, what do you think somebody outside of yourself, if you just read this about a third person and imagine somebody had those experiences, what would be the first thing [to] come to mind, because it’s so difficult for us to do that internally with ourself, right? We don’t view ourself as another person. We are inside the system. It’s difficult for us to have compassion sometimes about what we’ve experienced or lived through or been pressured with. So I think that always, first and foremost, when you experience an emotion that makes you feel like one, you don’t belong in academia. Two, you don’t have what it takes, or you don’t, somehow, are subpar in some domain. Or three, you know, you don’t really know what you’re doing. A lot of folks go in the field, I know I did, and it’s like, what am I doing? I don’t even know if I’m doing okay. I just, we really want to explode this idea that there is right and wrong fieldwork. There is no right or wrong fieldwork. There’s only your fieldwork. You are a scholar with your own unique insights, your gift that you bring just having your lived experience as a person and your insights and your brilliance and how you’ve lived it, that’s the gem of things. So there is no really, you know, we’re all grasping through this thick fog of how to do these processes, with this feeling like there’s an absolute rule book on how to do them. And that was kind of, for me, one of the most interesting and disenchanting things about academia is like, no one really knows what they’re doing. 

[52:48] There’s no absolute, like, rule of how things are managed. And so really realizing that at first it felt so disenchanting and like confusing, and actually finding that liberating. We are redefining and making what it is. And when I say we that gives us a lot of power. It’s not just one. It’s this collective of individuals who are actively sort of understanding that undue pressure is being put on them or unfair inequity is happening in their education and their work. So I’d say first, like, taking stock of those experiences, also really coming firm on what our boundaries are and thinking about what they are. Even practicing, you know, that sounds silly, but a lot of pressure has been put on survivors. Just will tell them no if you don’t want to, or why didn’t you say no, or ask them to stop harassing you if you didn’t like it. There’s so many strategies we have, even for navigating comfort in these difficult moments, very difficult. You know, when somebody asks you, oh, you know, so do you date people in your field research? And you’re just like, I don’t, what do I say? I don’t want to make them angry. Clearly, I’m interviewing them, and we’ve done three interviews now, and I need to do seven. So what do I say in this moment, right? Not being given these tools, and to say, oh, what’s your goal in asking me that? Just have some kind of sentence we give people, collection of words and language to use in these situations where otherwise it’s demanded our full obediency. Otherwise, we’re somehow challenging the academic process and are therefore being a difficult man to manage, or a difficult student, right? That we somehow complicated relationships with stakeholders or things like that, and really sort of having practical skills, as well as taking stock of that emotional, you know, human toll on people. It’s a big thing, right? So I think that framework is almost personal, therapeutic, and other parts very practical, coupled with practical skills and conversations and understanding what help exists. Now for institutions, I have a laundry list. We need to actually have conversations with students. Trainings, you know, hire FieldFutures to come in and talk about these things, bring the, you know, the FIEST training and embed this thing into your curriculum. We need to start, especially as social scientists, talk about trauma in a realistic way, and what that can look in our field. We need a lot more support institutionally. And so I’d say the biggest thing now, because we’re in a critical moment, is stopping that cycle, and that means preparing students before they go in with these conversations, and also immense amount needs to be done to help folks who’ve already lived through these traumas. 

[54:48] Many lives have been destroyed by this blind sort of steamrolling over anyone who’s made noise about the realities of harm in this work we do, that we’ve, you know, been subjected to, and a lot has to be done in order to really showcase that institutions take this serious, that they genuinely want to help, and that survivors are going to come first for them, and that stopping this is a priority. So again, sorry, I’m long winded, but there’s a lot to say, but I think that’s pretty much the nutshell.

DC [56:05]: No, those are all very valid laundry list items, and also very good tips. I remember from the training that we coordinated with you, one of your tips really stuck out to me, and it was this idea of wearing a name tag when you’re doing field research, so that you are signifying both to yourself and to your interlocutors, that, like, I’m on duty, I am working right now, and that automatically, without even having to say anything, kind of sets this boundary between the personal and professional that gets so blurred in ethnographic fieldwork, in a lot of different types of fieldwork, but particularly long-form ethnography, where you are living day in and day out with your participants. So those are all amazing reflections, and we’re so grateful to have heard more about your your experience and all of the resources that you’ve created and all of the incredible work that you’re doing.

JLH [57:03]: No, I want to just hand the thanks right back to you. You have, you and many of your partners have done so much work in not letting this conversation go away. And you know you’re working, we’ve worked together in the past, obviously, and this has been a long, longstanding goal of ours. And just a massive thanks to everyone who has played, no matter how small the role in changing that academic culture. Again, every time you negate something that that is is sapping your energy, every time you, you know, take that day off or take that day of rest you need, you make it safer for all of us. So I really want to cheerlead for this larger, you know, this larger community of all of us who are who are doing this work. And yeah, encourage folks to bring the training to your university or reach out. The Fieldwork Initiative is not, like, a top-down thing. If anybody wants [to] tell your story, you can do it anonymously. If you have an article you want to publish there, or anything at all you want, it’s completely open for everything. So really encourage, you know, again, even sharing your story, if that’s something that will be therapeutic. But no, I think we’ve really covered a lot of ground, and I encourage further conversation. So thank you so much.

DC [58:19]: Thank you, Jerika, and if people want to find out more about you and your work with The Fieldwork Initiative or the FIEST training, how can they find you?

JLH [58:28]: Yeah, we have our website, fieldworkinitiative.org, and I think our Twitter is active, mildly, or X, whatever it’s called. But reaching out by email is the best way, or through our website, is absolutely great. So yeah, encourage folks to reach out, even just to say hi, tell us what you’re working on. We also love hearing about wonderful field stories, too! Where everything, you know, where you were a total badass, and it went wonderful and was life-changing in a positive way. So we love supporting, in general, positive fieldwork across the board, so feel part of this community, no matter what your positionality is.

DC [59:07]: Perfect. Thank you so much, Jerika.

JLG [59:09]: Thank you.

[59:10] [AnthroPod theme music, “All the Colors in the World” by Podington Bear]

DC [59:17]: To learn more about Jerika and her work with The Fieldwork Initiative, check out their website at www.fieldworkinitiative.org. We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, produced by me, Daillen Culver, with assistance by Esther Neira Castro. Stay tuned for further episodes on auto-reflexivity, where we interview anthropologists from diverse backgrounds on the challenges they’ve faced in the field, how they’ve handled them, and how they’ve integrated those experiences into their sense of self and/or research.