Research, Performance, and Doing Human Geography: Some Reflections on the Diary-Photograph, Diary-Interview Method

Abstract

IntroductionIn a recent commentary on the achievements and challenges of the so-called`new cultural geography ' Nigel Thrift (2000a; see also 1999a;2000b) argued that its biggest weakness is its methodological timidity.``Cultural geographers have'', Thrift (page 3) writes,`a llied themselves with a number of qualitative methods, ... most notably in-depth interviews and ethnographic`procedures'. ... [W]hat is surprising is how narrow this range of skills still is, how wedded [cultural geographers] still are to the notion of bringing back the`data', and then re-presenting it (nicely packaged up as a few supposedly illustrative quotations), and the narrow range of sensate life they register.'' Thrift's claim needs qualification. There are human geographers doing methodologically innovative research which is pushing at the boundaries of established conventions.

Emotions, Encounters and Expectations: The Uncertain Ethics of 'The Field'

“…Before encountering 'the field' I would have benefited from an awareness of the contingent nature of fieldwork, of how plans rarely fall together in 'the field' and of how important responding to events is to this process. From my nerves on the first day at the drop-in centre to the sadness of my final day there, my experiences of this 'field' was always one of the 'incompleteness and event-ness with which the whole research process is shot through' (Latham 2003(Latham : 2005. Uncertain and unexpected friendships arose, mutual exchanges formed and fell away, and all of this occurred against the backdrop of the instability of asylum status.…”

A multisensory phenomenology of interrail mobilities

“…Methodologically, phenomenological research with a non-representational focus requires 'pushing' or merging methods in experimental ways to document the embodied practices and performances of travellers' experiences (Latham, 2003;Simpson, 2011). This questions the occularcentric domination of the visual in tourism studies (Crang, 1997).…”

“…Our main intention in integrating audio-visual impressionistic tales and netnographic insights is to demonstrate how non-representational concerns can inject into phenomenologies a willingness "…to experiment with established, indeed quite traditional, methods to create innovative, insightful methodological hybrids" (Latham, 2003(Latham, , p. 1993. As such, this work is intended to pave a route for further methodological experimentation in tourism research.…”

Dirty Museum

“…It also makes it easier to think of new ways of engaging with how individuals and groups inhabit their worlds through practical action.' (Latham 2003(Latham : p. 1993. Of my accreted experiences of Kilmainham Gaol in 1991, the abiding memory remains of how the volunteer Gaol guide became enraged when the walk came towards the courtyard which entailed the telling savagery of the execution of Connolly, the formidable Scot, one of the few European leaders who had opposed the First World War, the last executed leader of the 1916 Uprising.…”

“…In other writing I began to advocate an auto-ethnographic reflectiveness in similar settings or locations I have travelled to, the remote island farmhouse where Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four, the abandoned town of Pripyat near Chernobyl, the cascading dark-pools of the unexpectedly morose 9/11 Memorial, voyaging through these spectrogeographies and recorded as personal and internal (diaristic, experiential) journeys as much as they were also externalised and objectified. The method enables an account of psychological responses and an 'accretion of embodied experiences' (Latham 2003(Latham : p. 2001 in reframe conventional research methods as a 'more flexible attitude towards both the production and interpretation of research evidence. It also makes it easier to think of new ways of engaging with how individuals and groups inhabit their worlds through practical action.'…”