In this article I provide a reflexive account of my emotions
both prior to and during fieldwork. I begin with a personal
narrative that explores my motivations for conducting a
study on a pertinent environmental issue – river pollution.
My comparative ethnographic fieldwork in two different
socio-cultural and environmental settings, that of the
Klang River in Kuala Lumpur and the Torrens River in
Adelaide, yielded stories, pictures, and/or a spectrum of
emotions about people’s interactions with the rivers, some
of which resonated with my own. On the one hand, positive
emotions during fieldwork were triggered, for example,
when I observed colourful flora and fauna in certain section
of the rivers. On the other hand, I experienced negative
feelings when I observed floating rubbish and trash racks
installed across the rivers. I describe these personal fieldwork experiences, alongside a discussion about my own
reflections. Finally, and in light of my fieldwork experience, I briefly suggest implications for ethnographic research and methodological practice
