Farming in the troposphere: drawing together affective atmospheres and elemental geographies

Adams-Hutcheson, Gail

doi:10.1080/14649365.2017.1406982

Cited by 23 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…First, we illustrate how attending to the more‐than‐human has the potential to prompt a rethink of low recruitment numbers or short interviews, which might otherwise be positioned and internalised as “failures” to engage human subjects. Our reflections from research using a postal survey confirm Davies (), de Jong (), and Adams‐Hutcheson's () observance of the fundamental importance of more‐than‐human agency in research praxis. Rather than understanding response rates in ways that emphasise the design of research methods, apprehending response rates through more‐than‐human agency draws attention to the sensuousness and fleshiness of the body and its capacity to affect and be affected.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 72%

“…Closer attention to the material, the elemental, the non‐human in research processes and outcomes is merited, and we argue that, more often than not, these details are not included in the published geographical literature; we tend to rely on anecdotes from passing colleagues in corridors, who recount a home‐insight interview waylaid by an inquisitive cat knocking over an audio recorder, or a weekend surveying beachgoers boosted by a heatwave. Only occasionally do we catch glimpses of the more‐than‐human forces at play in shaping the research process and outcomes, as work by Davies (), de Jong (), and Adams‐Hutcheson () attest.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, de Jong (, p. 80), in describing a failed survey methodology in festival research, highlights the affective intensities of festival atmospheres, weather, and other more‐than‐human forces – such as time of day, soundwaves, and blood‐alcohol content – in working against response rates and data quality: “A second limitation [of the survey method] resulted from elements of the festival assemblage including heavy rain, loud music, large crowds and alcohol. An invitation to complete a survey was unwelcome in this context, particularly in the afternoon.” One of the more detailed examples of more‐than‐human agency in the research process comes from Adams‐Hutcheson (, p. 15), whose research on the everyday farming practices of sharemilkers in New Zealand has illuminated the role of weather and animals in shaping the affective atmospheres of field sites and interview data: “The cows, Pete [interviewee] and I felt anxious and oppressed by the wind and mud, and it pressed on us stirring mood and feeling … Thus, the ambience of the interview was cold, hard and intense, just like the weather.” Collectively, these methodological reflections show how the material, the elemental, and the more‐than‐human are significant in research processes and outcomes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Specifically, we illustrate how more‐than‐human agency shapes questionnaire response rate, and argue that the questionnaire survey is always a more‐than‐human achievement. We seek to build on a nascent body of work concerned with the agency of the more‐than‐human world in shaping the research process – as distinct from work examining more‐than‐human research subjects – including research that attends to the roles of weather (Adams‐Hutcheson, ; de Jong, ), daylight (Davies, ), and non‐human animals and plants (Bell et al., ).…”

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

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: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 72%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The questionnaire survey as more‐than‐human achievement

Wilkinson

Gibbs

Waitt

2019

Area

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“…For example, in some cases, respondents used the buildings around them to organise the narratives they were developing for the interviewer. Others have explored how brought objects, such as photographs, can enliven interviews (Bartolini et al 2017;Adams-Hutcheson 2017). Such an approach fits with human geography's enthusiasm for materiality.…”

Section: On the Social Occasion Of The Interviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Qualitative methods I: On current conventions in interview research

Hitchings

Latham

2019

Progress in Human Geography

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This is the first in a series of three reviews that scrutinise the conventions of doing and describing qualitative research that currently predominate in human geography. Since we find that interviews are the most widely used method in this field, we begin with an examination of how they feature in the work of today’s human geographers. How many people do geographers speak with and what do they say about their interviewing procedures? What do they imagine their interviews to be in terms of the social occasion? And how do they present the empirical material that is thereby generated?

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The substance of climate: Material approaches to nature under environmental change

O’Reilly

2018

WIREs Climate Change

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Climate change is at once immediately tangible and embodied-in hurricanes, droughts, and the expansion of tick and mosquito habitats, for example-and almost unimaginable from a human scale. Climate encourages us to think expansively, in terms of millennia, geological epochs, systems and patterns earthly in scope. Climate, through material and cultural processes, connects people to weather and the environment, particularly in timescales beyond the human lifetimethough some changes occur rapidly, visibly, and spectacularly. This review seeks to understand how people mediate between climate change at once lived and unfathomable. I propose that people do this through interactions with nature as material objects and earthly processes. That is, there is a substance to climate that is sometimes erased from abstract models and political debates. This article considers the substance of climate through three analytical frames: (a) matter and substance, (b) lively nonhuman nature, and (c) experience and embodiment in science and policy. The materiality of climate allows us to consider the scientific and environmental impacts of climate change immediately alongside the power dynamics that enable and can solve this problem.

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Farming in the troposphere: drawing together affective atmospheres and elemental geographies

Cited by 23 publications

References 49 publications

The questionnaire survey as more‐than‐human achievement

The questionnaire survey as more‐than‐human achievement

Qualitative methods I: On current conventions in interview research

The substance of climate: Material approaches to nature under environmental change

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