- Email: [email protected]
Critical visceral methods and methodologies
Geoforum 82 (2017) 51–52
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Geoforum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum
Critical review
Critical visceral methods and methodologies Debate title: Better than text? Critical reflections on the practices of visceral methodologies in human geography
MARK
Allison Hayes-Conroy Department of Geography and Urban Studies, Temple University, United States
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Visceral Methods Body Politics Biosocial
Researchers interested in visceral or bodily methods and methodologies should be prepared to fully engage with the politics of research as well as the social and political context of their studies. Longer-term, intentional, applied, and collaborative projects may be particularly relevant. Finally, visceral methods could be particularly apt for advancing biosocial science and inquiries into body-environment relations.
When I proposed the notion of ‘visceral geography,’ building from the work of feminist scholars like Elspeth Probyn and Robyn Longhurst, I did so with a pragmatic aim: understanding political agency from the body out (Hayes-Conroy and Hayes-Conroy, 2010; Probyn, 2000; Longhurst et al., 2009). I wanted to understand the bodily charge behind everyday political actions and decisions, especially those having to do with food; what materially, physically activates people, and how can social scholars understand it? I never understood this ostensibly ‘material’ bodily charge as apart from the world of representation – of difference, language, theory and meaning-making. And, while academics have often debated the relationship between the ‘material’ body and the supposedly ‘immaterial’ world of representation,1 I tire of such disputes. I worry about the gap between this kind of debate and a real effort to understand and support movements for social transformation (Staeheli and Mitchell, 2005; Elden et al., 2011). Given these concerns, I want to raise two key points: One relates to the urgency that visceral methods directly and critically engage with the political realities of the societies in which we study. The second relates to the recognition that just as our methods are always already political, they are also always already visceral. Concerning political engagement: It is important that scholars are engaging with the ‘visceral realm’ – i.e. the state/feeling of bodies in interrelation with environments/space – and that we seek to improve methods of research to do so. Still, in order to not repeat the mistakes of “naturalizing” and “universalizing” the relationship between human bodies and environments/spaces, it is crucial that scholars also pay attention to the social contexts of our studies (Kobayashi and Peake,
1
E-mail address: [email protected]. For example: Lorimer (2008), Pile (2011).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.03.017 Received 10 March 2017; Accepted 19 March 2017 0016-7185/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1994). While we “follow” bodies and embodied experiences in the field, we must also “follow” experiences of social position(ing), norms and difference. Part of this work might mean attending to what is not immediately evident in our fieldwork, perhaps due to our own social positions or to the prevailing norms of the society in which we work (c.f., Lorde, 1984). To this end, critical work on whiteness in food geographies and beyond may be illuminating (Guthman, 2008; Slocum, 2011; Kobayashi and Peake, 2000; Bonnett, 1997), and echoes prior interventions made by feminist scholars about the invisibility of gender (c.f., McDowell, 2008). While there are many ways to envision what political engagement in visceral methods might look like, clearly we cannot be content with a focus on the visceral for the sake of the body itself; such contentment will only re-inscribe the logics of the status quo into our research activities and outcomes. Furthermore, visceral methodologies should be chosen by those willing to fully engage with discussions about context and power in research relationships, not because they seek to avoid them (e.g., Farrow et al., 1995; Derickson and Routledge, 2015). Concerning the viscerality of methods: One flip-side to the above argument is that if we take seriously the politics of research (and fieldwork), we will recognize that our methods are always inescapably visceral. Whether conducting discourse analysis or cooking, dancing or otherwise sharing with collaborators/participants, embodied feelings shape the social and political processes inherent in our work. How, then, to attend to that viscerality, and for what ends? In my work, I have sought out populations that are already ‘primed’ to talk about the visceral realm: i.e., Slow Food movement members who organize
Geoforum 82 (2017) 51–52
A. Hayes-Conroy
ment into the body and the body into the environment, as well as the politics of these interrelations? Such questions look to become increasingly significant in the coming decades.
around the embodied pleasures of eating, or participants in the Colombian initiative Legion del Afecto who have created non-verbal communication via dance and other bodied arts (Hayes-Conroy and Martin, 2010; Hayes-Conroy and Hayes-Conroy, 2015). Studying with populations that are ‘primed’ for talking about the visceral may make it easier to co-create knowledge that recognizes complex variations in the (political) power of visceral feelings. It also provides opportunities for non-verbal communication using strategies already active in the population, such as acting in ritual/theatrical events or sharing meals. Whatever the event, non-verbal communications about the visceral realm are not to be approached as static ‘facts.’ Rather, what we capture are negotiated moments of dynamic attempts to clarify the “inner me” to the “outer we.” Another slightly different visceral approach I have undertaken has been during a funded project on youth-based community engagement.2 Here I co-created visceral knowledge by making the research bigger – bigger than research – and giving my collaborators room to dream. In a surely imperfect nod to what Derickson and Routledge (2015) call “insurrectionary imagination”, we have created the beginnings of a model for collaboration and transformation called ElAtlas. Because ElAtlas is ‘real’ (an online platform and on-the-ground practice), it provides a framework to examine a timeline of negotiated visceral exchange; together, over time, we document the intersection of social critique, meaning-making, and bodily feelings associated with helping community groups to network with each other. While ‘creating space to dream’ may not always be plausible, visceral scholars and criticallyengaged researchers may find interest in methods that promote longerterm, intentional and applied projects of collaboration between researchers and participants. To conclude, I raise new questions: A visceral approach has made clear to me the interconnection of many things – mind/body, discourse/ feeling, immaterial/material, social/biological, self/environment. I have been inspired by recent scholarship on understanding the material body from a combined social-biological perspective (e.g., Guthman and Mansfield, 2013; Meloni, 2014; Rose, 2013). Thus, I want to consider how visceral methods can attend to broader biological and ecological realities, as they are central to both bodily experience and political situatedness. I ask: in what ways could visceral methods be used to understand and intervene within the growing science of body-environment interrelation? What methods might be used to trace the environ-
References Bonnett, A., 1997. Geography, ‘race’ and Whiteness: invisible traditions and current challenges. Area 29, 193–199. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4762.1997. tb00022.x. Derickson, K.D., Routledge, P., 2015. Resourcing scholar-activism: collaboration, transformation, and the production of knowledge. Prof. Geogr. 67 (1), 1–7. Elden, S., Gregory, D., Sevilla-Buitrago, Á., 2011. Spaces of the past, histories of the present: An interview with Stuart Elden and Derek Gregory. ACME: Int. J. Crit. Geogr. 10 (2), 313–339. Farrow, H., Moss, P., Shaw, B., 1995. Symposium on feminist participatory research. Antipode 27 (1), 71–74. Guthman, J., 2008. “If they only knew”: color blindness and universalism in California alternative food institutions. Prof. Geogr. 60 (3), 387–397. Guthman, J., Mansfield, B., 2013. The implications of environmental epigenetics: a new direction for geographic inquiry on health, space, and nature-society relations. Prog. Hum. Geogr. 37 (4), 486–504. Hayes-Conroy, A., Hayes-Conroy, J., 2015. Political ecology of the body: a visceral approach. In: Bryant, R.L. (Ed.), The International Handbook of Political Ecology. Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, pp. 659–673. Hayes-Conroy, J., Hayes-Conroy, A., 2010. Visceral geographies: mattering, relating, and defying. Geogr. Compass 4 (9), 1273–1283. Hayes-Conroy, A., Martin, D.G., 2010. Mobilising bodies: visceral identification in the slow food movement. Trans. Inst. Br. Geogr. 35 (2), 269–281. Kobayashi, A., Peake, L., 1994. Unnatural discourse. ‘Race’ and gender in geography. Gender, Place Cult.: J. Feminist Geogr. 1 (2), 225–243. Kobayashi, A., Peake, L., 2000. Racism out of place: thoughts on whiteness and an antiracist geography in the new millennium. Ann. Assoc. Am. Geogr. 90 (2), 392–403. Longhurst, R., Johnston, L., Ho, E., 2009. A visceral approach: cooking ‘at home’ with migrant women in Hamilton, New Zealand. Trans. Inst. Br. Geogr. 34 (3), 333–345. Lorde, A., 1984. Age, race, class, and sex. Sister Outsider: Essays Speeches 16 (9), 114–123. Lorimer, H., 2008. Cultural geography: non-representational conditions and concerns. Prog. Hum. Geogr. 32 (4), 551–559. McDowell, L., 2008. Thinking through class and gender in the context of working class studies. Antipode 40, 20–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2008.00569.x. Meloni, M., 2014. Biology without biologism: social theory in a postgenomic age. Sociology 48 (4), 731–746. Pile, S., 2011. For a geographical understanding of affect and emotions. Trans. Inst. Br. Geogr. 36 (4), 603–606. Probyn, E., 2000. Carnal Appetites: Foodsexidentities. Routledge, London & New York. Rose, N., 2013. The human sciences in a biological age. Theory, Cult. Soc. 30 (1), 3–34. Slocum, R., 2011. Race in the study of food. Prog. Hum. Geogr. 35 (3), 303–327. Staeheli, L.A., Mitchell, D., 2005. The complex politics of relevance in geography. Ann. Assoc. Am. Geogr. 95 (2), 357–372.
2 The described research is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant #1452541. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
52
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Geoforum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum
Critical review
Critical visceral methods and methodologies Debate title: Better than text? Critical reflections on the practices of visceral methodologies in human geography
MARK
Allison Hayes-Conroy Department of Geography and Urban Studies, Temple University, United States
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Visceral Methods Body Politics Biosocial
Researchers interested in visceral or bodily methods and methodologies should be prepared to fully engage with the politics of research as well as the social and political context of their studies. Longer-term, intentional, applied, and collaborative projects may be particularly relevant. Finally, visceral methods could be particularly apt for advancing biosocial science and inquiries into body-environment relations.
When I proposed the notion of ‘visceral geography,’ building from the work of feminist scholars like Elspeth Probyn and Robyn Longhurst, I did so with a pragmatic aim: understanding political agency from the body out (Hayes-Conroy and Hayes-Conroy, 2010; Probyn, 2000; Longhurst et al., 2009). I wanted to understand the bodily charge behind everyday political actions and decisions, especially those having to do with food; what materially, physically activates people, and how can social scholars understand it? I never understood this ostensibly ‘material’ bodily charge as apart from the world of representation – of difference, language, theory and meaning-making. And, while academics have often debated the relationship between the ‘material’ body and the supposedly ‘immaterial’ world of representation,1 I tire of such disputes. I worry about the gap between this kind of debate and a real effort to understand and support movements for social transformation (Staeheli and Mitchell, 2005; Elden et al., 2011). Given these concerns, I want to raise two key points: One relates to the urgency that visceral methods directly and critically engage with the political realities of the societies in which we study. The second relates to the recognition that just as our methods are always already political, they are also always already visceral. Concerning political engagement: It is important that scholars are engaging with the ‘visceral realm’ – i.e. the state/feeling of bodies in interrelation with environments/space – and that we seek to improve methods of research to do so. Still, in order to not repeat the mistakes of “naturalizing” and “universalizing” the relationship between human bodies and environments/spaces, it is crucial that scholars also pay attention to the social contexts of our studies (Kobayashi and Peake,
1
E-mail address: [email protected]. For example: Lorimer (2008), Pile (2011).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.03.017 Received 10 March 2017; Accepted 19 March 2017 0016-7185/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1994). While we “follow” bodies and embodied experiences in the field, we must also “follow” experiences of social position(ing), norms and difference. Part of this work might mean attending to what is not immediately evident in our fieldwork, perhaps due to our own social positions or to the prevailing norms of the society in which we work (c.f., Lorde, 1984). To this end, critical work on whiteness in food geographies and beyond may be illuminating (Guthman, 2008; Slocum, 2011; Kobayashi and Peake, 2000; Bonnett, 1997), and echoes prior interventions made by feminist scholars about the invisibility of gender (c.f., McDowell, 2008). While there are many ways to envision what political engagement in visceral methods might look like, clearly we cannot be content with a focus on the visceral for the sake of the body itself; such contentment will only re-inscribe the logics of the status quo into our research activities and outcomes. Furthermore, visceral methodologies should be chosen by those willing to fully engage with discussions about context and power in research relationships, not because they seek to avoid them (e.g., Farrow et al., 1995; Derickson and Routledge, 2015). Concerning the viscerality of methods: One flip-side to the above argument is that if we take seriously the politics of research (and fieldwork), we will recognize that our methods are always inescapably visceral. Whether conducting discourse analysis or cooking, dancing or otherwise sharing with collaborators/participants, embodied feelings shape the social and political processes inherent in our work. How, then, to attend to that viscerality, and for what ends? In my work, I have sought out populations that are already ‘primed’ to talk about the visceral realm: i.e., Slow Food movement members who organize
Geoforum 82 (2017) 51–52
A. Hayes-Conroy
ment into the body and the body into the environment, as well as the politics of these interrelations? Such questions look to become increasingly significant in the coming decades.
around the embodied pleasures of eating, or participants in the Colombian initiative Legion del Afecto who have created non-verbal communication via dance and other bodied arts (Hayes-Conroy and Martin, 2010; Hayes-Conroy and Hayes-Conroy, 2015). Studying with populations that are ‘primed’ for talking about the visceral may make it easier to co-create knowledge that recognizes complex variations in the (political) power of visceral feelings. It also provides opportunities for non-verbal communication using strategies already active in the population, such as acting in ritual/theatrical events or sharing meals. Whatever the event, non-verbal communications about the visceral realm are not to be approached as static ‘facts.’ Rather, what we capture are negotiated moments of dynamic attempts to clarify the “inner me” to the “outer we.” Another slightly different visceral approach I have undertaken has been during a funded project on youth-based community engagement.2 Here I co-created visceral knowledge by making the research bigger – bigger than research – and giving my collaborators room to dream. In a surely imperfect nod to what Derickson and Routledge (2015) call “insurrectionary imagination”, we have created the beginnings of a model for collaboration and transformation called ElAtlas. Because ElAtlas is ‘real’ (an online platform and on-the-ground practice), it provides a framework to examine a timeline of negotiated visceral exchange; together, over time, we document the intersection of social critique, meaning-making, and bodily feelings associated with helping community groups to network with each other. While ‘creating space to dream’ may not always be plausible, visceral scholars and criticallyengaged researchers may find interest in methods that promote longerterm, intentional and applied projects of collaboration between researchers and participants. To conclude, I raise new questions: A visceral approach has made clear to me the interconnection of many things – mind/body, discourse/ feeling, immaterial/material, social/biological, self/environment. I have been inspired by recent scholarship on understanding the material body from a combined social-biological perspective (e.g., Guthman and Mansfield, 2013; Meloni, 2014; Rose, 2013). Thus, I want to consider how visceral methods can attend to broader biological and ecological realities, as they are central to both bodily experience and political situatedness. I ask: in what ways could visceral methods be used to understand and intervene within the growing science of body-environment interrelation? What methods might be used to trace the environ-
References Bonnett, A., 1997. Geography, ‘race’ and Whiteness: invisible traditions and current challenges. Area 29, 193–199. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4762.1997. tb00022.x. Derickson, K.D., Routledge, P., 2015. Resourcing scholar-activism: collaboration, transformation, and the production of knowledge. Prof. Geogr. 67 (1), 1–7. Elden, S., Gregory, D., Sevilla-Buitrago, Á., 2011. Spaces of the past, histories of the present: An interview with Stuart Elden and Derek Gregory. ACME: Int. J. Crit. Geogr. 10 (2), 313–339. Farrow, H., Moss, P., Shaw, B., 1995. Symposium on feminist participatory research. Antipode 27 (1), 71–74. Guthman, J., 2008. “If they only knew”: color blindness and universalism in California alternative food institutions. Prof. Geogr. 60 (3), 387–397. Guthman, J., Mansfield, B., 2013. The implications of environmental epigenetics: a new direction for geographic inquiry on health, space, and nature-society relations. Prog. Hum. Geogr. 37 (4), 486–504. Hayes-Conroy, A., Hayes-Conroy, J., 2015. Political ecology of the body: a visceral approach. In: Bryant, R.L. (Ed.), The International Handbook of Political Ecology. Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, pp. 659–673. Hayes-Conroy, J., Hayes-Conroy, A., 2010. Visceral geographies: mattering, relating, and defying. Geogr. Compass 4 (9), 1273–1283. Hayes-Conroy, A., Martin, D.G., 2010. Mobilising bodies: visceral identification in the slow food movement. Trans. Inst. Br. Geogr. 35 (2), 269–281. Kobayashi, A., Peake, L., 1994. Unnatural discourse. ‘Race’ and gender in geography. Gender, Place Cult.: J. Feminist Geogr. 1 (2), 225–243. Kobayashi, A., Peake, L., 2000. Racism out of place: thoughts on whiteness and an antiracist geography in the new millennium. Ann. Assoc. Am. Geogr. 90 (2), 392–403. Longhurst, R., Johnston, L., Ho, E., 2009. A visceral approach: cooking ‘at home’ with migrant women in Hamilton, New Zealand. Trans. Inst. Br. Geogr. 34 (3), 333–345. Lorde, A., 1984. Age, race, class, and sex. Sister Outsider: Essays Speeches 16 (9), 114–123. Lorimer, H., 2008. Cultural geography: non-representational conditions and concerns. Prog. Hum. Geogr. 32 (4), 551–559. McDowell, L., 2008. Thinking through class and gender in the context of working class studies. Antipode 40, 20–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2008.00569.x. Meloni, M., 2014. Biology without biologism: social theory in a postgenomic age. Sociology 48 (4), 731–746. Pile, S., 2011. For a geographical understanding of affect and emotions. Trans. Inst. Br. Geogr. 36 (4), 603–606. Probyn, E., 2000. Carnal Appetites: Foodsexidentities. Routledge, London & New York. Rose, N., 2013. The human sciences in a biological age. Theory, Cult. Soc. 30 (1), 3–34. Slocum, R., 2011. Race in the study of food. Prog. Hum. Geogr. 35 (3), 303–327. Staeheli, L.A., Mitchell, D., 2005. The complex politics of relevance in geography. Ann. Assoc. Am. Geogr. 95 (2), 357–372.
2 The described research is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant #1452541. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
52