Living Through Fieldwork Duration: Rhythm as Temporal Apparatus

Abstract

This conceptual paper examines assumptions about time latent in traditional qualitative fieldwork. It draws on the work of Bergson, Campt, Kirby, Manning, and Phillips to enact a concept of fieldwork duration. Fieldwork duration is a co-constitution of seemingly disparate spacetimes that emerge in haptic (touching) relation. Fieldwork duration pushes beyond traditional ideas of “the field” being “out there” somewhere and the time of fieldwork as having a discrete beginning and ending. Because traditional qualitative inquiry generally conceives of time as a linear and static background to fieldwork, and because linear, progressive concepts of time are imbricated with systems of colonialism and raciocapitalism, the aim of conceptualizing fieldwork duration is to move toward greater possible temporal justice in qualitative inquiry. The authors also intersperse vignettes with theoretical text to draw readers’ attention to spatio-temporal and affective connectives incited and/or enacted by the writing itself.