Baptism of fire and recorder off: notes on embarrassments experienced by the researcher in daily work field

Abstract

The paths and routes defined to manage different situations experienced in the everyday routine of working with qualitative social research are not usually declared and properly analyzed as intrinsic components to the empirical field and to the object of study. We tried to think about how certain situations experienced by us in daily scientific work routine contributed substantially to our training, to better situate us in empirical field and clarify our objects of study. The reflection was organized in two sections. The first one - baptism of fire - discusses the tests undertaken by people surveyed to accept the researchers in the empirical field. The second one - recorder off - deals with the forms defined by respondents to be part of the research. The reflection contributed to reaffirm assumptions on qualitative research, however, should not be understood as a manual, but as part of a singular work experience lived by certain researchers during their relationships with certain subjects, in certain spaces and social times.