A vicarious scar

Abstract

Difficult challenges are an unavoidable aspect of doing ethnographic fieldwork in sensitive spaces or on sensitive subjects. A less commonly discussed problem, however, is the impact that vicarious or secondary traumas can have on researchers. Here, I discuss my experience of secondary trauma in conducting research with legal advocates in family-detention facilities in the US. Even in work in which trauma is centered, I show, the traumatic “wounds” of fieldwork can go unidentified, to the researcher's own detriment. I echo calls for our discipline to better recognize how ethnographers experience trauma, which results in part from continued disciplinary norms, and to reconsider our work as care. Additionally, I call for further attention to the more complex psycho/somatic traumas that can result from field research.