出版社：School of Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney
摘要：As a researcher, when I go out to do my fieldwork, it is inevitable that I carry
with me a certain mindset of what I expect or hope to encounter. While
remaining conscious of the research question when conducting fieldwork, there
is also a necessity to cultivate an awareness of the serendipitous, that happy
encounter with the unexpected which can offer alternate paths or different
insights into the research questions.
I find that opening myself to all my senses, grounding myself in where I am,
increases my intuitive awareness and the possibility of encountering the
serendipitous in my fieldwork. As I foreground sensory interconnection in the
field, I may find myself being guided to insights by the unexpected. In this
paper, I explore the possibility of a causal connection between a grounded,
sensory and experiential approach to my fieldwork and the serendipitous
occurrence.
My methodology is hermeneutic phenomenology which requires ‘an awareness
of life as an interpretive experience’ (Laverty 2003). I would argue that this
requires the researcher to be cognizant of being sensorily embodied in this
world. Sarah Pink (2015) writes: ‘the idea of a sensory ethnography … is based
on an understanding of the senses as interconnected and interrelated’ (p.xiii).
