Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2023
Abstract
The current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has placed the entire world in a liminal position whereby our well-rehearsed and predictive practices have been deeply shaken. Within this context of liminality, studies point to potential distress among healthcare workers who are taking care of COVID-19 patients. Most studies focus on emotional distress of frontline healthcare workers as fixed entities. The current approach perceives emotion as a type of connection with social worlds. This article focuses on contextual acts of emoting and is organized around personal, situational, and cultural features of nine frontline medical doctors affiliated with ten hospitals in Metro-Manila who were taking care of COVID-19 patients when they told their stories from March to June 2020. The methodological approach was based on self-reporting narratives that contextualized emotional experiences. Discussions are based on the researcher’s subjectivity as an analytical tool since face-to-face fieldwork was not possible. Findings highlight the great variety of emoting events in comparison with the classical focus on six basic universal emotions. Furthermore, words used by the participants only partially expressed what they were going through, pointing to the limitations of our linguistic repertoire to sufficiently represent human experiences. The final insight shows how emotional life appears to be more about contextualized events rather than isolated psychological entities.
Recommended Citation
Gappy, J. M. B. (2023). Emoting in context: Lived narratives of Filipino healthcare frontliners during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. In S. R. Redillas, & R. J. O. Taduran (Eds.), Pagtawid: Filipinos in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic (pp. 49-69). University of Santo Tomas Publishing House.
Comments
For more information on obtaining the book, contact the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House (website: https://publishing.ust.edu.ph/).