spontaneously express my field experience. I regretted the absence of a
“risk-free” space for communication, what I saw as a space that did not
expose me to the professional critique of my observer position nor to the
emotions of the family circle in response to my accounts of the actors
observed. Nevertheless, as a researcher I certainly emerged “enlightened”
from the interactions between my different social scenes, and even more
ready to be in the field, by myself, in a satisfactory way, personally as much
as professionally.
CONCLUSIONS
In this paper I reflected on securing and penetrating the borders between
different scenes of my life. Managing the interplay between the research,
academic professional, and family and personal scenes became problematic
because of a growing emotional involvement in the field. In turn the field
became problematic because I had considered emotions to be the sign of a
researcher becoming too involved with the field. Furthermore I was faced
with a peculiar phenomenon in these scenes: my interactions with family,
colleagues, and friends strangely enough came to resemble those I devel-
oped with the police officers. Indeed, in each of the other scenes I had to
filter the expression of my opinions and feelings, just as I did in the field. In
all areas I adjusted my position by distancing myself.
The positions I adopted and adapted in those various scenes were as
follows: I was subjected to interaction in the field scene (strong emotions
during unexpected events); my confrontations with the professional scene
was quite useful (colleagues highlighted an acculturation process); but as
with the family scene, in some ways, it was “unsafe” (I did not want to talk
about all I had observed in the field because I feared the emotional reac-
tion); my personal scene, for its part, had been affected by a strong sense of
failure (I had not been able to maintain a fixed position as observer).
Some positions in the various scenes were the expression of a profes-
sional deontological concern in relation to the field, and I was afraid that
other positions were the result of an acculturation process in contact with
the field. My doubts oscillated between high scientific quality and great
scientific weakness. My observer position was unstable and it was hard for
me to justify it.
I found support in understanding my positions in unexpected places: in
my professional but also in my social environment. I realized that fieldwork
58 CAROLINE DE MAN