ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors illustrate the emotional labour that is experienced as a result of fear and risk in ethnography. The negative experiences the authors have are often forgotten or pushed aside as a result of the euphoria experienced on completion of their fieldwork; they look back on their fieldwork with rose-tinted glasses. The authors attempt to move beyond simply indulgently telling stories of the field and argue that these discussions of their emotional ethnographic experiences in completing high-risk fieldwork should become routine in both their writing and their conversation. Several ethnographers suggest strategies for managing risk and uncomfortable situations in the field. Normalizing our emotional experiences of the field has the potential to have both negative and positive consequences for managing the process of research ethics in ethnographic research. University ethics committees have a tendency to be overly cautious and often struggle with the unknown and constantly developing nature of ethnography.
