Navigating the city: gender and positionality in cultural geography research

Kusek, Weronika A.; Smiley, Sarah L.

doi:10.1080/08873631.2014.906852

Cited by 28 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…As such, in order to encourage interviewees to share various details related to their migrant experiences, I also navigated my positionality as a Pole, researcher from the USA, migrant, and a woman. (See Kusek and Smiley 2014) Many of the research participants also invited me to join them in their everyday activities after the formal interview was finished. I was invited to join the migrants on their way to work, join them for dinner at their favorite restaurants, during trips to parks and playgrounds with their children, Master's degree Works at non-profit organization or even participate in their Friday night outings to bars and clubs.…”

Section: Methodology and Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While migrants shared a lot of information with me during the interviews, I recognize I would have not been able to draw equally detailed conclusions about their lives without experiencing life in London for myself: the long commute times in the London Underground, rather modest but highly priced London accommodations, high prices of food, and everyday experiences of belonging to a growing and internally diverse group of ethnic workers in London (see Kusek and Smiley 2014).…”

Section: Methodology and Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Transnational identities and immigrant spaces of Polish professionals in London, UK

Kusek

2015

Journal of Cultural Geography

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Section: Methodology and Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodology and Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transnational identities and immigrant spaces of Polish professionals in London, UK

Kusek

2015

Journal of Cultural Geography

Self Cite

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“…Campbell et al . ; Cuomo and Massaro ; Kohl and McCutcheon ; Kusek and Smiley ). However, relatively little literature has discussed situations in which two researchers with different positionalities meet in a physical ‘field’, or how such arrangements could influence research.…”

Section: ‘Tour Guide’ ‘Researcher’ or Something Elsementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Unlike my friends, other drivers with whom I had no previous connection did not disclose such information, perhaps because they were afraid that I would report them to the traffic police. Along the lines of Kusek and Smiley's () analysis, my insiderness granted me access to information that other researchers might not have obtained. However, it does not mean that challenges arising from my outsiderness vanished when interviewing acquaintances.…”

Section: Interviewing Local Peoplementioning

confidence: 99%

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Doing fieldwork the Chinese way: a returning researcher's insider/outsider status in her home town

Zhao

2017

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Insider/outsider status has been recognised in geographical literature as an important aspect of positionality on which researchers should reflect critically. Based on my fieldwork experience in Dali, southwest China, this paper articulates an account of the co‐existence of ‘insiderness’ and ‘outsiderness’ during the research process in a way that adds nuance to scholarly challenges to conceptions of insider/outsider status as an oppositional binary. I touch on several dilemmas that arose over the course of my fieldwork in my home town, such as working with local research assistants, ‘encountering’ a Western supervisor in the field and interviewing local people. I argue that interacting in the field with people from different ethnic, professional or socioeconomic characteristics dynamises a researcher's insider/outsider position, bringing his or her in‐between position to the fore. In this paper, I highlight the tensions and negotiations arising from my experience of in‐betweenness in Dali. I also point out several particularities of doing fieldwork in China by referring to Chinese ways of thinking and communication, and analyse how insiderness complicates the research process with particular regard to China. Finally, I conclude that working in the field is not only a process of data collection, but also a process of learning ‘who I am’.

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Encountering Emotions During International Fieldwork: Using Innovative Pedagogies to Develop Emotional Intelligence and Resilience

Marvell

Simm

2021

Experiential Learning in Geography

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International fieldwork in Geography offers significant opportunities for experiential learning; however, there are physical and socio-psychological challenges as well. Students are confronted with unfamiliar environments, mild culture shock, challenging physical and climatic conditions, the stresses of group work and intensity of field presentations, or fatigue during field trips, and their influence on the affective domain. This results in differing individual behaviours and performances of students. This chapter examines how students' emotional intelligence can be utilized through innovative pedagogies to make sense of the encounters experienced by students (and staff) during international fieldwork. Using a case-study of undergraduate fieldwork in Barcelona, Spain, we examine how the use of student-led peer teaching and learning, facilitated by tutors, and supported by self-reflectivity exercises, can be harnessed to facilitate students' geographical learning. This approach also helps students' resilience to cope with the challenges as well as the opportunities. The use of reflective field diaries is a powerful tool not only for enabling students to observe and record the geography that they encounter but also to reflect on the meanings and positionality before, during and after being immersed in that place. Our studies show how the effective integration of peer learning with self-reflectivity enhances students' emotional intelligence and resilience, a deeper understanding of the geographies of a place, with the potential to achieve transformative learning.

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Navigating the city: gender and positionality in cultural geography research

Cited by 28 publications

References 24 publications

Transnational identities and immigrant spaces of Polish professionals in London, UK

Transnational identities and immigrant spaces of Polish professionals in London, UK

Doing fieldwork the Chinese way: a returning researcher's insider/outsider status in her home town

Encountering Emotions During International Fieldwork: Using Innovative Pedagogies to Develop Emotional Intelligence and Resilience

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