Signals misread: Affect, risk, and blind spots in ethnographic fieldwork
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This paper reflects on an unexpected encounter during fieldwork in Predappio, Mussolini’s birth and burial place, during the centenary of the March on Rome. Alternating between narrative and analytical reflection, I explore how ethnographic attention becomes organised under conditions of ambiguity and affective intensity. Drawing on distinctions between blanks and blind spots and the concept of epistemic disconcertment, I argue that internalised framings of risk, heightened vigilance, and emotional strain shaped how uncertainty became il/legible in the field, particularly in relation to my local host: these pressures encouraged me to resolve ambiguity through available interpretative frameworks or recognisable forms of threat, narrowing the epistemic openness through which ethnographic knowledge is produced. I suggest that ethnographic openness is therefore a fragile condition: it requires not only remaining open to uncertainty, but also recognising when interpretative coherence has arrived too quickly and tolerating ambiguity long enough for alternative possibilities to become thinkable.
Source: Ethnography
Author: Silvia Binenti
Institution: University of Cambridge
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,650
OpenAlex ID: W7225374837