Becoming Stiffen

as the Key Practice for Thinking Reflexively about “the Researching Body”

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the phenomenon —becoming stiffen— as the key practice for thinking reflexively about “the researching body”. I reconsider my research experiences of the discrimination problems and demonstrate two cases of the phenomenon. In one case, though I got nervous and tense, I was positively involved in trying to communicate to the informants in the “Now and Here” of the research setting. In the other case, in spite of getting nervous and tense, I tried to keep the “good” role of the situation but failed to communicate it to them. Both cases are closely connected with the problem of categorization, which is an important topic of the ethnomethodological sociology.
In fieldwork we researchers are not machines that objectively collect date and do not influence the informants and the field. To think reflexively and examine “the researching body” is very important and interesting. We should not discuss this only on the level of research methodology. We can totally reconsider and reconstruct our sociological practices by watching closely our researching bodies.