This article discusses narrative practice and textile-making as two techniques of researcher reflexivity in diverse teams conducting qualitative-interpretive research. Specifically, it suggests definitional ceremonies—a collective structured method of storytelling and group resonances—as a useful tool to interweave diverse researchers as a team, while maintaining the plurivocity that enables deeper reflexivity. Additionally, textile-making is introduced as a material and embodied way of expression, which complements narrative practice where words fail or need a non-linguistic form of elicitation. We illustrate the two techniques with examples from our international, collaborative qualitative-interpretive research project with demobilized guerrilla fighters in Colombia.
Textile-makingbroadly defined as a practice based on crafts such as sewing, embroidering, appliquéing, knitting, quilting, and weavingis an arts-based method, which is increasingly used in participatory qualitative research but so far under-explored as an approach in peace and conflict studies. Textile-making is particularly suited for impactful peace and conflict research, as it offers innovative ways to combine fieldworkbased qualitative data generation with the emancipatory, transformative, and therapeutic benefits of art in general and needlework more specifically. Textile-making shares arts-based methods' ability to explore experiential and practical knowledge by offering nonlinguistic ways of expression. As a visual method, images expressed through needlework diversify the iconographic and iconological analyses of other visual approaches. Additionally, textiles' materiality and the process of making have been shown to generate trust, care, and healing, with the fabric and needlework processes also being powerful metaphors that allude to the repair of damage and the healing of wounds. As a participatory and relational method, textile-making can be used at any stage of qualitative peace and conflict research and, depending on the research methodology into which it is embedded, serve different purposes in the research design including socialtransformative aims.
El objetivo del artículo es identificar las potencialidades del tejido manual y las prácticas asociadas como recursos estratégicos para el cuidado colectivo de la salud mental, en especial desde la perspectiva de la disciplina de enfermería, en diálogo con otros saberes. La reflexión parte del lugar metafórico del tejido resaltando algunos casos de la mitología griega y del pensamiento indígena en el contexto latinoamericano, para establecer luego su relación con los cuidados que permitan asegurar la continuidad de la vida, donde lo femenino y lo cotidiano toman un lugar central. Finalmente, se esboza y se ilustra el entramado entre tejido y cuidado de la vida, mediante los aprendizajes obtenidos de experiencias desarrolladas desde la investigación y la extensión universitaria en Antioquia y otras regiones de Colombia, donde el tejido, el bordado y la costura se han consolidado como recursos estratégicos para el cuidado de la salud mental en contextos de intenso sufrimiento como el que producen el conflicto armado y la violencia estructural prolongada.
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