What Does It Mean to Teach Trauma-Informed Anthropology?

Abstract

This Teaching Brief is an extended discussion on the findings presented in our article ‘Field of Screams Revisited: Contending with trauma in ethnographic fieldwork’ (Procter, Spector and Freed, this Special Issue). In the article, we report on a survey on the fieldwork experiences of 43 anthropologists. The survey sought to understand the kinds of trauma exposure experienced by anthropologists; the ways in which researchers were affected by this exposure both during and after fieldwork; and the support they received – or would have benefitted from – to anticipate, prevent and mitigate this. In summary, analysis of the survey led to the following core findings: first, that trauma exposure is a feature of many fieldwork experiences whether or not the fieldwork takes place in a violent or chaotic setting. Second, that there are notable gaps in the skills, preparedness and support of researchers who are exposed to trauma in the course of their fieldwork. Third, that encounters with trauma, even if ‘only’ vicarious trauma, during fieldwork can have significant adverse impact on researchers, which in turn has an impact on the overall quality and integrity of the research produced as a result of the fieldwork. Finally, we shared findings on how researchers coped with the difficulties they had faced, including levels of support received from departments and supervisors (more than half of respondents who felt able to share the challenges they had faced doing fieldwork with their supervisors or other senior academics felt that their concerns had been downplayed or dismissed). Taken together, it appears that many aspects of the fieldwork preparation experience are not sufficiently trauma-informed, and that this is detrimental both to the wellbeing of some researchers and to the quality of research produced. In this Teaching Brief, and in the style set out by this journal, we offer educators a series of questions to reflect on in order to move towards a trauma-informed anthropology, prompted by the findings of this survey.