Emotions and Fieldwork in Times of Covid-19: Pregnant Women in Health Spaces

Abstract

The covid-19 pandemic has been an event of medical, economic, political, and social magnitude that has changed the dynamics of action and interaction of individuals (Campo 2020). The objective of this work is to state and describe the emotions, feelings and affects that accompanied the completion of the doctoral research named “Trajectories and Choice Practices in Maternal Breastfeeding among Women Using Health Centers in Puebla during the covid-19 Pandemic”, and from which it has emerged, while indicating the effects that these had on the difficult task of carrying out field work in a traditional way and establishing contact with collaborators due to the risk of contagion (Rich 2022). The lack of knowledge about the disease and the need to continue with activities despite the virulence led to the envelopment of methodological strategies such as digital and multi-sited ethnography (Estalella and Criado [eds.] 2018). We consider that the challenges of carrying out field work in such complex situations also present riches and strengths that are relevant to investigate from reflective, situated and critical perspectives where the emotionality of the researcher is the guide of action to generate new forms of approaches, epistemes and dialogues to form ethnographies with and from emotions (Evangelidou and Martínez-Hernáez 2020). Finally, we aim to show the emotionality of the researcher in the face of the events and situations that have occurred during the search for information in carrying out the ethnographic work, with the intention of sharing the experience and contributing to the anthropological discipline, which, more than traditional, positions itself agile and capable of continuing to describe social phenomena of such dimensions.