Fostering contemplative ethnographers: A tale of fieldwork ethics, vulnerability, and trauma in neoliberal academia

Undertaking fieldwork within the educational spaces of neoliberal academia underscored how ethnography, as a quotidian ethical tradition, is in dire need of fostering more contemplative practitioners. To illustrate, I narrate a tale of profound failure in self-care triggered by the coercive actions of an unlikely participant-researcher. Anchored around the recollection of an emotionally traumatic memory, I critically reflect on a choice to ignore my own well-being for the self-perceived guarantee of safeguarding field notes. I identify this decision to have been broadly shaped by extractivist pressures channeled by today’s higher education landscape. In asking ethnographers and other researchers to contribute to, and (or) engage in affective accounts concerning personal vulnerability in the field, I call for a greater instilling of contemplative research principles. Practicing fieldwork with such mindfulness will help promote researcher health and better illuminate uncompassionate neoliberal inequities, while also delivering severely untapped epistemic value.