Ethics, conflicts in the field and their textualization

research experience before, during and after the Pilgrimage of Padre Cícero Romão

Abstract

In the present ethnographic report, I describe a series of issues related to ethics, conflicts in the field and their textualization, in the context of research with a popular folklore group from Alagoas entitled Guerreiro. I deal, in particular, with some experiences lived in 2019 in a nine-day trip to the Romaria do Padre Cícero Romão, in Juazeiro do Norte/CE, from which my positionality as a “researcher”, possible “pilgrim” and “family member” of some research interlocutors created a frontier place of questioning the founding myths of the anthropological discipline, such as the doctrine of scientific objectivity. In this sense, passing through participant observation by questions of gender, ethnicity and race, class, religiosity, generation and schooling, I present a field experience that complicates the distinction between Selves and Others in the centrality of the anthropological paradigm.