Textile-Making as Research Method

Abstract

Textile-makingbroadly defined as a practice based on crafts such as sewing, embroidering, appliquéing, knitting, quilting, and weavingis an arts-based method, which is increasingly used in participatory qualitative research but so far under-explored as an approach in peace and conflict studies. Textile-making is particularly suited for impactful peace and conflict research, as it offers innovative ways to combine fieldworkbased qualitative data generation with the emancipatory, transformative, and therapeutic benefits of art in general and needlework more specifically. Textile-making shares arts-based methods' ability to explore experiential and practical knowledge by offering nonlinguistic ways of expression. As a visual method, images expressed through needlework diversify the iconographic and iconological analyses of other visual approaches. Additionally, textiles' materiality and the process of making have been shown to generate trust, care, and healing, with the fabric and needlework processes also being powerful metaphors that allude to the repair of damage and the healing of wounds. As a participatory and relational method, textile-making can be used at any stage of qualitative peace and conflict research and, depending on the research methodology into which it is embedded, serve different purposes in the research design including socialtransformative aims.

Reflexivity in research teams through narrative practice and textile-making

“…In this context, our project used interpretive methods including ethnographic observation, narrative biographical interviews, and textile-making to explore continuities and transformations in subjectivities and relationships in the process of the FARC peace signatories’ reincorporation into civilian life in Llano Grande and San José de León, two rural locations in the department of Antioquia. Moreover, the textiles embroidered by our participants have been exhibited locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally to generate dialogue and make a modest contribution to the Colombian peace process (Arias López et al, 2020a). 3…”

“…(Excerpt from editorialized team reflection, Andrea Ortega, Medellin, 2019) communities (Arias López et al, 2020b). An additional contribution of this article is therefore the development of a method for processual, collective and practical reflexivity that, in an interpretive spirit, breaks down barriers between methods of understanding the self and those used with participant-subjects.…”

“…Previously employed by one of the authors as a method in research with victims of violent conflict in Colombia (Arias López, 2017), here we use textile-making as a material and embodied complement to narrative practice. Importantly, these methods of researcher reflexivity are also the very methods our team used in its research with communities of former FARC fighters and their rural host communities (Arias López et al, 2020b). An additional contribution of this article is therefore the development of a method for processual, collective and practical reflexivity that, in an interpretive spirit, breaks down barriers between methods of understanding the self and those used with participant-subjects.…”

Doing memory with needle and thread: narrating transformations of violent conflict

“…Andrä et al, 2020, pp. 351-353;Arias López et al, 2020b). We exhibited the textile books in both research sites, as well as in the regional capital Apartadó and the department's capital Medellín.…”

“…Berit: This resonates a lot with our experiences, Roxani. In our project, needlework is a method to explore the subjectivities of former FARC guerrillas who are in the process of "re-incorporation" into society, their family members who have come to live with them, and their new peasant neighbours (Arias López et al, 2020b). We work in two locations in the department of Antioquia: Llano Grande, a 'territorial space for training and reincorporation' (ETCR), the successor to the ZVTN mentioned above, and in San José de León, a village built by former combatants of a fighting unit on their own initiative.…”