18
Getting Personal: Reflexivity, Positionality, and
Feminist Research
Kim V. L. England
1994. The Professional Geographer 46 (1), 80-9.
- Reprinted with permission from Kim V. L. England . The chapter was originally published in "Getting personal: Reflexivity, positionality, and feminist research." 1994. The Professional Geographer 46(1), pp. 80-89, Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Think we must. Let us think in offices; in omnibuses; while we are standing in the crowd watching Coronations and Lord Mayor‟s Shows; let us think as we pass the Cenotaph; and in Whitehall; in the gallery of the House of Commons; in the Law Courts; let us think at baptisms and marriages and funerals. Let us never cease from thinking – what is this „civilization‟ in which we find ourselves? What are these professions and why should we make money out of them? Where in short is it leading us, the procession of the sons of educated men? (Woolf, 1938, 62-63)
Virginia Woolf‟s words speak to the process of making geography. She urges us to think about and to reflect on the spatial fabric of everyday life. She asks us to consider the structure of our social relations and how we are accountable for them and how our actions perpetuate those relations. She wants us to consider how things could be different.
In this paper I discuss the process of making geography at a time when social scientists are increasingly suspicious of the possibility of “objectivity” and value-free research, and when the acceptance of the socially constructed and situated nature of knowledge is increasingly commonplace [among social scientists]. In particular, I focus on and problematize fieldwork, a term that I use as shorthand for those research methods where the researcher directly confronts those who are researched.2 I approach this task as a feminist, but recognize that many of the issues that I am struggling with exist for researchers of other philosophical-political-methodological stripes.
Conclusion
I have discussed the process of making geographies that are sensitive to feminist and poststructuralist challenges to objectivist social science. I explored ethical questions that exist in most research, but are thrown into stark relief when there is an immediate relationship between the researcher and the people being investigated. I began with a critical discussion of neopositivist and feminist/critical methodology. I noted that the latter does not provide a clear set of rules to follow, but a series of “maps” to guide research. I argued that greater reflection on the part of the researcher might produce more inclusive, more flexible, yet philosophically informed methodologies sensitive to the power relations inherent in fieldwork. Hence, I engaged in a reflexive inquiry into a “failed” research project about gender, sexual identities, and space. That process raised further insight into the ethical nature of my research question, especially with regard to the dialogical relationship between the researcher and the researched. Of course, ethical problems, by their very nature, are not easily resolved and the solution that I offered illustrates the situated and partial nature of our understanding of “others.” I argued that fieldwork is intensely personal, in that the positionality [i.e. position based on class, gender, race, etc.] and biography of the researcher plays a central role in the research process, in the field as well as in the final text.
Full Text
Download Click Here
ليست هناك تعليقات:
إرسال تعليق