Researching With Feeling

Why should researchers be interested in their feelings and emotions as they carry out research? Emotion is what it is to exist, to be human, and is present in every sphere of our lives. All activities are infused with emotion, even those that are constructed as ‘rational’, because rationality and emotionality are interpenetrated and entwined because all thinking is tinged with feeling, and all feeling is tinged with thinking. This book illuminates the emotional processes of doing social and organizational research, and the implications of this for the outcomes of research. With contributions from leading academics and research practitioners, it addresses the significant issue of the sometimes intense emotional experiences involved in doing research and the implications it has for the theory and practice of social research. By examining the nature of feelings and emotions, it explores how we might understand researchers’ emotions and experiences, and considers the often powerful feelings encountered in a variety of research contexts. Topics discussed include: power relations; psycho-social explanations of researcher emotions; paradoxical relations with research participants and the sometimes disturbing data that is gained; research supervision; the politics of research; gender; publishing, undergoing vivas and presenting at conferences. This book will therefore be a valuable companion to researchers and research students from the start of their career onwards.

Why should researchers be interested in their feelings and emotions as they carry out research? Emotion is what it is to exist, to be human, and is present in every sphere of our lives. All activities are infused with emotion, even those that are constructed as ‘rational’, because rationality and emotionality are interpenetrated and entwined because all thinking is tinged with feeling, and all feeling is tinged with thinking. This book illuminates the emotional processes of doing social and organizational research, and the implications of this for the outcomes of research. With contributions from leading academics and research practitioners, it addresses the significant issue of the sometimes intense emotional experiences involved in doing research and the implications it has for the theory and practice of social research. By examining the nature of feelings and emotions, it explores how we might understand researchers’ emotions and experiences, and considers the often powerful feelings encountered in a variety of research contexts. Topics discussed include: power relations; psycho-social explanations of researcher emotions; paradoxical relations with research participants and the sometimes disturbing data that is gained; research supervision; the politics of research; gender; publishing, undergoing vivas and presenting at conferences. This book will therefore be a valuable companion to researchers and research students from the start of their career onwards.

This book addresses wide-ranging dilemmas that social researchers may face as a result of silences, neglected feelings, and blind-spots in their research. In every research endeavour, thoughts, intuitions, biases, feelings or sensations may be left aside as the researcher attempts to come to terms with the complexities of material and figure out what the ‘main issue’ is. Researchers may pay attention to their own emotional responses during the interview, but often only in their field notes. Rarely do feelings of shock, irritation, boredom or, for that matter, amusement, excitement and delight find their way into the analysis itself. In addition, researchers are all susceptible to blind-spots, often unaware of what is being avoided in research or omitted from it. However, reflection about precisely these gaps or silences may prove essential for developing new and interesting questions as well as comprehensive, responsive, and responsible research practices. In this volume, an international, cross-disciplinary cohort of researchers think critically about the silences, neglected feelings, and blind-spots in their own work, and offer insights for enhancing research practices. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in research methods and methodology.

Contributors to this edited collection argue for an emotional rebellion in the academic world, arguing that the presentation of research as ‘objective’ conceals the subject positions of researchers and the emotional imperatives that often drive research.

A book which examines the need for social scientists to include into their research the feelings and emotions of both themselves and their respondents. Qualitative researchers have, in part, insulated their readers from raw emotion, or failed to document the whole of the facts surrounding collection of sensitive data. By taking a professional stance the observer can sometimes miss the reality of what they are observing. People's problems, including the researchers' own subjective biases and feelings, need to be included in all qualitative research. The book argues that the professional stance frequently adopted by observers and observed unconsciously insulates the observer and hence the reader from the true picture. This book examines the worries, fears, feelings and restrictions placed on researchers when observing, recording and interviewing people about their private and sensitive inner feelings and the problems which arise when respondents being studied are in the grip of powerful emotions.

As part of the study of emotions and politics, this book explores connections between affect and cognition and their implications for political evaluation, decision and action. Emphasizing theory, methodology and empirical research, Feeling Politics is an important contribution to political science, sociology, psychology and communications.

From one of the world’s leading neuroscientists: a succinct, illuminating, wholly engaging investigation of how biology, neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence have given us the tools to unlock the mysteries of human consciousness “One thrilling insight after another ... Damasio has succeeded brilliantly in narrowing the gap between body and mind.” —The New York Times Book Review In recent decades, many philosophers and cognitive scientists have declared the problem of consciousness unsolvable, but Antonio Damasio is convinced that recent findings across multiple scientific disciplines have given us a way to understand consciousness and its significance for human life. In the forty-eight brief chapters of Feeling & Knowing, and in writing that remains faithful to our intuitive sense of what feeling and experiencing are about, Damasio helps us understand why being conscious is not the same as sensing, why nervous systems are essential for the development of feelings, and why feeling opens the way to consciousness writ large. He combines the latest discoveries in various sciences with philosophy and discusses his original research, which has transformed our understanding of the brain and human behavior. Here is an indispensable guide to understand­ing how we experience the world within and around us and find our place in the universe.

This book focuses on the place sand purpose of emotions in the research process, and explores the appropriate boundaries. Designed to explore how to manage the emotional content of research, the text service as a supplemental to qualitative research method courses, and is an excellent reference for the professional as well.