Emergent Conversation 26

This essay is part of the series Making Vulnerability Work
PoLAR Online Emergent Conversation 26

By Crystal A. Felima

In 2017, I joined a research project led by Dr. Mark Schuller at Northern Illinois University to examine the long-term impacts of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), focusing on how aid reshaped community relationships, influenced civic engagement and government trust, and blurred the lines between humanitarian intervention and development. On my first official day of data collection in Jérémie, my research partner and I met with a woman to discuss her experiences with INGOs. What began as a structured interview soon shifted into a shared moment of vulnerability. As she shared her views on aid organizations, she began to recount the emotional devastation she endured after Hurricane Matthew struck in October 2016. She lost her home, her animals, and her sense of stability. As she narrated, she cried. I was unprepared for the rawness of her grief. I sat silently, uncertain whether my presence was comforting or retraumatizing. All I could do was listen and affirm her words and feelings with my posture, gaze, and the attentiveness of my body. To this day, I still think of her and wonder: did I inadvertently cause her emotional pain by reopening wounds?

Fieldwork in anthropology is often marked by tension, complexity, and deep emotional engagement. Research activities, while methodologically grounded, become more intimate as they are amplified by emotions and introspection. For me, conducting ethnographic research in Haiti has been one of the most transformative experiences of my life. It allowed me to deepen my understanding not only of disasters and ecological challenges but also of myself, a woman with paternal ties to Haiti. I had the privilege of listening to and learning from Haitians whose perspectives are too often excluded from development and disaster discourse. Immersed in the cultural fabric of Haitian society, I gained firsthand insight into the lived realities of vulnerability, structural inequalities, and agency. And amid the narratives I collected about disasters and ecological crises, I encountered waves of Diaspora guilt, grief, and rage—complex emotions of privilege, hopelessness and responsibility stirred by what I witnessed, learned, and absorbed from my research collaborators, friends, family, and acquaintances in the field. My observations bear the deeply embedded socio-economic and political insecurities shaping daily life: market women struggling to sell their goods, restavèk children balancing heavy buckets of water on their heads, and garbage choking the canals meant to protect against floods. These scenes bothered me because of the larger macro-structures that rendered such inequalities systemic and enduring for the individual and collective in Haiti.

Moments of vulnerability prompted reflexive thinking about myself as a researcher. Mary Margaret Fonow and Judith A. Cook (1991, 2) note that reflexivity is a “source of insight,” enabling researchers to thoughtfully reflect on, critically assess, and analytically investigate the research process. Yet, such engagement is still underexplored in academic writing and graduate courses for training students. Not often do we, as researchers, feature our observations, emotions, and considerations as a legitimate site of anthropological inquiry.

As ethnographers, we acknowledge the emotional risks inherent in our research within our Institutional Review Board protocols. However, no research design and protocol can fully prepare us for the emotional weight of witnessing suffering or the discomfort our questions and engagement may evoke. No ethics form or training can fully prepare us for the intensity of bearing witness to trauma or the structural inequalities that take shape in our field sites. Nor do these institutional practices offer guidance on what to do when your research role falls away, and you are sitting with grief we cannot fix or explain. Ethical responsibility in disaster contexts requires more than informed consent; it requires a commitment to care, listening, and acknowledging our emotional responses as part of the process.

These experiences are not unique to Haiti. In Puerto Rico’s aftermath of Hurricane Maria, I encountered similar challenges, including people navigating the loss of loved ones, prolonged power outages, damaged property, disputes over home titles, and the ongoing effects of economic austerity. Ecological devastation shapes daily life. During these field encounters, I asked: How do we, as ethnographers, process the emotions tied to our research? Is it okay to admit and voice our frustrations or grief in the field? Where do these feelings belong in academic discourse? How do we balance the demands of rigorous scholarship with the realities of stress, loneliness, and shock that arise in post-disaster environments? Must we confine these discussions to personal conversations with friends and colleagues or in our private journal entries, or is there space within our field to acknowledge and validate these feelings? In Vulnerable Witness: The Politics of Grief in the Field, Kathryn Gillespie and Patricia J. Lopez (2019) curated voices that grapple with precisely these questions of ethics, witnessing, privilege, and research positionality. Their work affirms the importance of reflexivity and emotion in rigorous scholarship.

My introduction to this practice came through Downtown Ladies: Informal Commercial Importers, a Haitian Anthropologist and Self-Making in Jamaica, by Gina A. Ulysse (2008). Her reflexive ethnography encouraged me not to shy away from critically examining my identity and my relationship to both the discipline and the field site, seeing these as vital entry points for understanding and shaping my research.  Karla Slocum (2001, 129) writes a scholar’s “politicized identity may engender a sense of responsibility that extends beyond the professional realm.” For Black women anthropologists, that responsibility often includes reflecting on our identities, positionalities, and the marginalization we and our communities face within and beyond the academy. As Meta Y. Harris (2005) argues, Black women are increasingly turning to autoethnography as a means of self-exploration and community engagement. Thus, self-ethnography emerges as a key practice of reflexivity, not rooted in self-centeredness but a tool for making sense of one’s position in relation to the people, structures, and phenomena we study.

As an outsider-insider in Haiti, I observed the realities of hardships from both proximity and distance. Still, I remained aware of the comforts and protections afforded to me by my birthplace, education, and mobility. I also considered the applied implications of my presence and research through introspection. What could I offer, tangibly and ethically, to those who welcomed me into their lives? What did it mean to witness, record, and write about their experiences with precarity and ecological challenges? These questions did not fade as fieldwork progressed but resurfaced in quiet moments. I chose not to write down some difficult experiences in my field notes; however, those memories have never left me.

Disaster research offers insights into how catastrophes reshape and redirect the life trajectories of individuals and communities. In Haiti, narratives of Hurricane Matthew and the recurrent flooding in Cap-Haïtien revealed the multifaceted consequences of disasters, including physical destruction, economic disruption, psychological distress, and existential uncertainty. Livelihoods are disrupted. Homes and belongings are damaged and unrecoverable. Crops are lost. Work and schools are halted. Faith, for many, is tested. Disasters expose systemic vulnerabilities and test the limits and boundaries of institutional preparedness, social support networks, and community resilience.

These fieldwork lessons have significantly informed my approach to teaching and mentoring the next generation of disaster ethnographers. In 2019, as a postdoctoral fellow, I created and led an undergraduate Research Tutorial Abroad Program, bringing three students to Puerto Rico. Before entering the field, we dedicated a week to ground our work in anthropological methods, feminist ethics, and discussions of positionality, reflexivity, and care. We discussed how to approach narratives of harm and trauma with sensitivity, particularly in communities still navigating the long-term impacts of Hurricane Maria. Recognizing that we would interact with residents with grief and research fatigue, we had to consider ways to center solidarity and relationality in our research practices. Our conversations emphasized that fieldwork is not only about gathering data but about researching with humility and awareness. This means taking seriously the ethics of presence, listening, and accountability. It also means understanding that trauma lingers and that researchers must approach the field with emotional preparedness and methodological sensitivity.

As climate change intensifies the frequency and severity of disasters, ethnographers will increasingly find themselves in post-disaster environments, collecting stories of survival, displacement, and recovery. Whether reflecting on the devastation of the Los Angeles wildfires, the flooding in eastern Kentucky, or the damage wrought by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina, it becomes clear that recovery extends far beyond the reconstruction of infrastructure. Families, cultural sites, landscapes, community centers, and schools will feel the lasting impacts of these events. Rebuilding will take years, and emotional healing often lags. Thus, as disasters attract seasoned and new researchers who enter these spaces to study, document, and analyze, we must ask:  How do we prepare to face the emotional weight of our work? How do we process what we carry with us from the field?

There may never be definitive “best practices” or a roadmap for conducting disaster ethnography. Still, one lesson remains clear: ethnographers must be aware of the emotional labor and psychological dimensions of our work and field sites. This includes acknowledging that we might face sensory overload, compassion fatigue, and moral distress. Just as we produce interview protocols or secure housing logistics, we must also develop research care plans. This includes establishing strong personal support systems of family, friends, mentors, and trusted field contacts to help navigate the emotional challenges that arise during fieldwork. Mapping out our networks of care is essential to supporting ourselves as we witness the afterlife of disasters and navigate the ethical demands of our work.

Conducting disaster research is to engage deeply with human vulnerability, agency, and the politics of crisis. However, it is also important to recognize our limits, responsibilities, and emotional thresholds, not just to our research but to ourselves and the communities we work with and for. As I continue to write about disasters and climate change, I recognize that I may carry the emotional residue of what I observe and witness in the field. I also carry the responsibility to represent not only what was spoken but what was felt. I strive to make space to acknowledge my entanglements in the stories I tell and to write not from a place of detachment but of careful, critical closeness. As Ruth Behar (1996) reminds us, vulnerability in writing should not paralyze us with empathy so overwhelming that we become silent. Rather, vulnerability should compel us to speak, write, and resist leaving the page blank. Through this kind of honest, reflective engagement, we move closer to grounded and human-centered practice in disaster research.

Behar, Ruth. 1996. The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart. Boston: Beacon Press.

Davies, Charlotte Aull. 1999. Reflexive Ethnography—A Guide to Researching Selves and Others. London: Routledge.

Fonow, Mary Margaret, and Judith A. Cook. 1991. “Back to the Future: A Look at the Second Wave of Feminist Epistemology and Methodology.” In Beyond Methodology: Feminist Scholarship as Lived Research, edited by Mary Margaret Fonow, pp. 1-15. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Gillespie, Kathryn, and Patricia J. Lopez. 2019. Vulnerable Witness: The Politics of Grief in the Field. Oakland: University of California Press.

Harris, Meta Y. 2005. “Black Women Writing Autobiography: Autobiography in Multicultural Education.” In Narrative & Experience in Multicultural Education, edited by Joann Phillion, Ming Fang He, and F. Michael Connelly, pp. 36-52. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Slocum, Karla. 2001. “Negotiating Identity and Black Feminist Politics in Caribbean Research.” In Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis, and Poetics, edited by Irma McClaurin, pp. 126-149. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Ulysse, Gina A. 2008. Downtown Ladies: Informal Commercial Importers, a Haitian Anthropologist and Self-Making in Jamaica. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.