Better than text? Critical reflections on the practices of visceral methodologies in human geography

Sexton, Alexandra; Hayes-Conroy, Allison; Sweet, Elizabeth L.; Miele, Mara; Ash, James

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.03.014

Cited by 33 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Questionnaire surveys have largely been absent from these methodological debates (e.g., Bastian et al., ; Buller, ; Dowling et al., ; Merriman, ; Sexton et al., ), consistent with suggestions that they lend themselves to quantitative expressions of knowledge, being informed primarily by a positivist paradigm (Babbie, ; Sui & DeLyser, ). Analyses of questionnaire methods tend to take the form of textbooks and guides for doing research (e.g., Dillman et al., ; McGuirk & O'Neill, ; McLafferty, ).…”

Section: “Doing More” In More‐than‐human Researchmentioning

confidence: 83%

“…As Lorimer (, p. 83) argued, geographers must broaden and refine their methodological practices to enable researchers to “better cope with our self‐evidently more‐than‐human, more‐than‐textual, multi‐sensual worlds.” The rise of more‐than‐human geography has not been without challenges and spirited debates about how to do this research. The predominance and rigour of qualitative research pertaining to a more‐than‐human geography reveals itself in review articles discussing methodological implications for the discipline (see Dowling et al., ; Hawkins, ; Merriman, ; Sexton et al., ). Each of these reviews considers in different ways the implications arising from the theoretical move away from humanist and social constructionist underpinnings of qualitative research towards a more‐than‐human geography.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The questionnaire survey as more‐than‐human achievement

Wilkinson

Gibbs

Waitt

2019

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Geography is fostering a diverse range of methodologies that engage the morethan-human dimensions of research. Debates surround the efficacy of both longstanding and emergent methodological approaches in grappling with how to do more-than-human geography. Much attention has been given to the methodological implications of theoretical debates that evoke distributed agency and calls to "enliven" research. To date, however, questionnaire surveys have not been considered as part of these deliberations. Survey response rates are normally reported as percentages, with scholarly attention focusing on how question design, financial incentives, and delivery format may influence human engagement with the questionnaire. Little attention has been paid to questionnaire survey methods in or for more-than-human research. Inversely, there is also little discussion of the agency of non-human bodies, processes, and materials, and how they work for or against survey completion. This paper contributes to these deliberations by exploring more-than-human agency in the delivery and completion of a postal questionnaire, distributed to rural households that are self-sufficient for water on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia. By focusing on the elements, infrastructure, and animals that work with and against survey delivery and completion, we show that questionnaire surveys are a more-than-human achievement. Consideration of the chewed and weathered survey, and the more-than-human processes that influence its delivery and completion, matters in challenging "human-centred" notions of field research. We argue that what we know about the world through a survey is always a performative process, not only by considering how research design aligns with politics and knowledge practices, but also the more-than-human. K E Y W O R D SAustralia, methodology, more-than-human, non-human, questionnaire, survey

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Section: “Doing More” In More‐than‐human Researchmentioning

confidence: 83%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The questionnaire survey as more‐than‐human achievement

Wilkinson

Gibbs

Waitt

2019

Area

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“…How food play increased sensitivity, informality and engagement in research, and how it allowed visceral difference to emerge and be expressed in the Altered Eating example is a key focus of this paper. At the same time, the work also parallels the turn to visceral geographic approaches and recent discussion of how to do it (Sexton et al, 2017). Hayes-Conroy (2017:51) reflection on the pragmatic aim of her coining of visceral geography in 2010 was to provide a means to understand "political agency from the body out".…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 84%

Food play: A novel research methodology for visceral geographers and health researchers

et al. 2019

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This paper reinforces the value of visceral geographic approaches to health research as a method 'beyond talking'. The paper establishes and sets out an integrative embodied multi-sensory research methodology-food play. Researchers across the social sciences and sciences are exploring the limits of logo and researcher centric research methods and exploring peoples sensory experience of themselves and the wider world using participatory, patient-centred, multi-sensory, visceral and biosocial geographic approaches. With reference to the growing interest in visceral approaches to research in geography, and sensory research in neurology, anthropology and embodied cognition in psychology, we argue that the presence and pungency of food uniquely animates research, and for our research, provided highly individualised insight into the lived experience of living long term with eating difficulties, allowing visceral difference to emerge and be expressed. We illustrate our approach with reference to a six-year research project, Resources for Living, co-produced with survivors of head and neck cancer and underpinned by a series of food play workshops to address post-treatment and chronic difficulties with food and eating.

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“…On the other hand, the article mobilises biographical notes, based on my banal experience of spending a short period in a condition of relative distance from the urban (or, at least, the 'urban' in the conventional sense) and from city life. Strictly speaking, there is nothing notable in my experience as described in this paper: the use of autobiographical notes is intended as a way to use my own body as a research tool, particularly in the emotional sphere (see for example Moss 2001;Pile 2010;Punch 2012;Claid 2018; see also recent debates on visceral methodologies: Sexton et al 2017). As I will argue, the experience of 'missing the urban' induced me to reflect on urbanism and the ways in which I emotionally locate its insides and its outsides.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scenes from an urban outside

Vanolo¹

2019

City

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This contribution to the Scenes & Sounds section of CITY reflects on the experience of feeling 'outside' the urban by focusing on urban absences. The argument is developed first through theoretical speculations on planetary urbanism, emotions and absences/presences. The paper then mobilises autobiographical accounts concerning the emotions that I experienced during a summer spent in an alpine village. The paper suggests that, in my emotional sphere, the village was a 'constitutive outside' of the urban, particularly through the manipulation of feelings of distance from, and proximity to, the urban. In this sense, the paper proposes that the village was not simply a 'negative other' of the urban; rather, it may be regarded as an outside which was relationally constructed in a position of continuity with the inside: the extra-urban may include and exceed the urban, and it may emotionally perform the role of a constitutive outside

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Better than text? Critical reflections on the practices of visceral methodologies in human geography

Cited by 33 publications

References 10 publications

The questionnaire survey as more‐than‐human achievement

The questionnaire survey as more‐than‐human achievement

Food play: A novel research methodology for visceral geographers and health researchers

Scenes from an urban outside

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