The ethnographer twice estranged? Methodological reflection on the embodied emotions within a Romani Pentecostal community
The aim of this text is to illustrate how embodied emotions surfacing during fieldwork can be used to inform how non-Romani social scientists understand the Romani religious lifeworlds. The authors analyse the way in which physical expressions of strong emotions are interpreted. In this specific case, similarities which the informants perceived with reference to the bodily reactions of the anthropologists led, in fact, to an intersubjective conviction that deep differences existed between the two sides. The authors argue that the ethnographer’s bodily reactions are, on the one hand, an instrument of anthropological insight into the Romani community under investigation. On the other hand, the ethnographer’s bodily reactions do invoke ethical, methodological, and interpersonal problems This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/ .
Authors
- Maciej Witkowski (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7072-8513)
- Ewa Nowicka (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0170-0845)
Institutions
- Civitas University (PL)
- WSB University (PL)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Romani Studies
- Published
- 2025-12-17
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3828/rost.2025.3
- Primary Topic
- Romani and Gypsy Studies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00