Beyond Ocular Inquiry

Abstract

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Qualitative Inquiry (QI), we write about the ongoing hegemony of the ocular in research and toward a more multisensory, and aural, embodied inquiry. Sonic inquiry is attention and intention as meta/physical and socially embodied processes without ignoring the body or separating the mind from body or material-physical and social worlds. This article is about acknowledging that sounds and silences have always shaped (research/er) possibilities, as well as what hearing research futures might offer.

Voice audio methods

“…A number of social researchers have explored sound-based methods in recent years (Daza and Gershon, 2015;Dean, 2016;Duffy and Waitt, 2011;Gallagher and Prior, 2014;Gershon, 2013;Hall et al, 2008;Moles and Saunders, 2015;Moles, 2013, 2016;Stevenson and Holloway, 2017). Much of this work argues that qualitative research can benefit from attending more closely to sounds beyond the usual focus on human voices, including using audio recordings to tune into background noise and sonic ambiences that are ordinarily 'filtered out' by researchers and their methods.…”

Disrupting student voice in education research through music

“…My attempt is to create what Deleuze (1994) might call a new image of thought, one that rejects common sense for the affective powers of aesthetic sense. However, scholars such as Daza and Gershon (2015) warn against the hegemony of the ocular gaze, suggesting a more affective, multisensory and embodied research-creative practice. I think this plays into St.…”

Listening differently: A pedagogy for expanded listening

“…The listening walk is a practice developed in acoustic ecology and experimental music, in which people walk through an environment paying close attention to whatever sounds are occurring along the way. The method has been used for artistic purposes (Drever, ) and for research (Daza & Gershon, ; Gallagher & Prior, ), but it can also function pedagogically (Gershon, ). We argue that listening walks offer a method for what Springgay (, p. 640) calls ‘sensational pedagogy’, in which movement and the senses combine to create ‘the possibility for individuals to interrogate their habitual responses to the world, to offer bodies the potentiality for recomposing their corporeal relations to each other, to their environment, and to the ways that we experience and create knowledge’.…”