ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role of emotions and emotional experiences during ethnographic fieldwork conducted on policing and police work. Criminological scholarship on policing seldom investigates the place and prominence of emotions, neither for the ethnographer nor the participants, during observations and interviews. Advice on fieldwork generally foregrounds principles of objectivity, impartiality, and neutrality. In this chapter, I suggest that we need to pay attention to our emotions when we write about, reflect, and subjectively introspect upon our fieldwork and in our analysis. I draw upon my ethnographic experiences of conducting fieldwork on policing in Pakistan and confess some of the key emotional challenges encountered. I also draw upon the experiences and insights relayed by other scholars who have conducted similar research in Pakistan and comparable environments.
