Qualitative methods II

I Introduction

That the world we inhabit exceeds human control and representation is becoming ever more apparent. From where we write this, for example, two phenomena continue to permeate popular conversation: record high spring temperatures and ongoing debates over the relative values of human and animal lives as manifest in responses to shark ‘attacks’ that involve shark culls. Conceptual openings that highlight and prioritize more-than-humans have enabled geographers to make important contributions to these discussions (Gibbs, 2015). Various identified ‘turns’ in the discipline, such as relational, non-representational, material and performative, urge and enable geographers to rethink complex people-nature relationships as contingent and layered processes, and the world as projects of human and more-than-human inhabitation (Poe et al., 2014). This shift in recognizing and acknowledging multiple more-than-human agencies challenges researchers to do geography differently – to perform, to engage, to embody, to image and imagine, to witness, to sense, to analyse – across, through, with and as, more-than-humans. It also invites researchers to open research relationships, thinking, and representations to beings, things, and objects previously ignored as active agents. It invites, in other words, alterations in thinking and methods.

How qualitative researchers in human geography are grappling with the challenge of more-than-human research methodologies is the focus of this, our second progress report. We are certainly not alone in our attempt to chart these methodological directions. They are being nurtured across a range of disciplines including anthropology (Maurstad et al., 2013; Ogden et al., 2013), environmental humanities (Kirksey, 2012), and broader qualitative social science (McLeod, 2014). A number of interesting compilations and reflections are also beginning to appear in human geography (Buller, 2014b; Hodgetts and Lorimer, 2015). ‘More-than’ research methodologies both encompass and exceed what is characterized as ‘animal geographies’; thus in this report we complement this focus – working hard to avoid reinforcing some of the uncomfortable categorizations which can so easily strengthen particular Western understandings of human–nature relationships, such as ‘animal geographies’ or ‘plant geographies’ (Christie, 1994; Suchet, 2002). We initially look to the exciting analyses that are being done within the framework of more conventional methodological approaches. We then review more innovative methodological approaches which extend more-than-human understandings whilst recognizing their own limits. The report then considers a particular body of work which is taking this further – into praxis, recognizing and enabling human–more-than-human collaborative research relationships which are actively engaging with power relationships by reconsidering the author-ity of their research. Our review ends by discussing the implications of this for power-knowledge production in human geography, arguing that although the more-than-human ‘turn’ is being thoroughly debated and engaged with in theory, the implications of this have not carried through to the same extent in terms of praxis – in terms of being enacted, embodied, or realized.

II More-than-human analyses based on more conventional techniques

Human geographers are harnessing a range of conventional qualitative techniques to the task of recognizing and engaging with more-than-human geographies. They are employing incredibly sensitive and nuanced analyses to data collected from interviews, focus groups, field diaries, ethnographies, secondary documents and archival material. For example, Probyn draws on interviews and ethnographic data to engage with migrants’ stories as tuna draws people, and particularly women, to their new homes across the globe (2014a). Although privileging human caring and universalizing humans as non-seafaring, Probyn’s work on sustainable oceans (2014b) is built on a careful discourse analysis of documentary material to explore the intense, affective, emotional and embodied relationships between people and sustainable oceans, the processes through which people come to care and the ethics of the entanglements which are thus engendered.

Qualitative researchers’ longstanding engagement of discourse analysis of policy and other documents is also being re-imagined through a more-than-human lens. Dittmer (2014) makes a strong case for a return to historical analyses in more-than-human research around assemblage and complexity theories – arguing that it is essential that the particular historical trajectories of new objects of study are thoroughly investigated and brought into the present. Thomas (2015) brings post-colonial and more-than-human work into conversation in her innovative conceptual work on relational ethics with the Hurunui River in Aotearoa New Zealand. These conventional methodological approaches open generative possibilities for more-than-human scholarship. Fredriksen’s (2015) paper on the conservation implications of wildcat definition in Scotland draws on scientific literature, policy documents, popular media and grey literature, as well as interviews with experts in Scottish wildcat conservation, to raise crucial questions about animal agency and human control. Hodge, Wright and Mozeley (2014) likewise use qualitative data drawn from focus groups with students and field diaries as the students reflect on their experiences with the physicality of the landscape and its agency. Key themes and connecting pathways tracing student experiences are generated, revealing the agency of more-than-human elements in student practice-based learning. In each case, conventional qualitative techniques underpin significant methodological innovation.

III Doing more with more-than-humans

In this section we review what we see as more innovative methodological approaches, those that are trying to ‘do’ more, trying to engage in new, interesting and novel ways with more-than-humans, finding ways to decentre human control of research processes and embracing the messy-ness of entangled worlds. A range of embodied and performative techniques are being developed by researchers who are interested in witnessing the interactions between humans and more-than-humans differently (Lorimer, 2010; Lorimer and Srinivasan, 2013). Such an orientation demands the means by which to engage, research and re-present sensory experiences, emotions, affective atmospheres and flows of life (Dewsbury, 2012; Hawkins, 2015). Two key sets of strategies can be collated: forms of noticing or paying attention, and more experimental research practices.

Methodological strategies and orientations to research subjects and objects are critical to giving voice to more-than-humans, and a diverse set of responses are evident in recent research. In an extension of the ‘tour’ commonly used to supplement interviews (see Dowling et al., 2015), ‘knowing through showing’ is being repurposed in a more-than-human manner. Pitt (2015) uses ‘knowing through showing’ to reconsider the purpose and products of research that seeks to understand being beyond the human. Drawing on ethnographic research with community gardens, Pitt uses techniques of learning through moving, attending, working, walking, talking, doing and picturing, which encourage guides – human and non-human – to share their expertise. Gardeners and plants share their knowledges and therefore tune the researcher’s attention towards their agency (‘plantiness’) and characteristics. Clark and Yusoff (2014) likewise deploy a ‘combustion-centred analysis’ that allows them to tell a material history of energy use. Ginn (2013) employed a ‘show me your garden’ method to capture the vitality of non-humans while Brice (2014) is attentive to ‘planty agencies’. Together, these are strategies explicitly devoted to recognizing, attending to and representing the more-than-human.

A number of papers self-consciously enact ‘messy methods’ in which experimentation is foregrounded and embraced for its appropriateness to more-than-human understandings. Malone (2015) highlights the analytical elements of messy methods, elaborating how in analysing her visual and aural recordings of child-dog encounters de-centring the human means purposively celebrating rather than being troubled by data that do not fit expected categories. Theriault (2015) proposes ‘ethnographic participant observation’ in which researcher experiences become sources of primary data, and, in this case, allow the place of invisible beings in social life to be apprehended and recorded. Also being used are autobiographical reflections on processes of becoming affected to the relational life of more-than-human and human elements. These require the development of more than-cognitive modes of attention such as McLeod’s (2014) work drawing on body trainings in yoga, meditation, dance, and Feldenkrais (body awareness). Taylor and Pancini-Ketchabaw’s (2015) research work with children, ants and worms entails efforts to notice and be interested, enabling them to become attuned to the multifarious ways that human and more-than-human bodies are moved, disconcerted and enlivened through their common world encounters. An important aspect of their approach is to recognize the limits of human-centred methodologies and acknowledge the sometimes unknowable (from a human perspective) worlds of ants and worms.

Non-representational methodologies also challenge and extend the ways researchers focus on doings: practices and performances. Vannini (2015) discusses how non-representational ideas can influence the research process, the political value of evidence, the methods and modes of research, the very notion of method, and the styles, genres, and media of research:

By animating lifeworlds non-representational research styles aim to enliven rather than report, to render rather than represent, to resonate rather than validate, to rupture and re-imagine rather than to faithfully describe, to generate possibilities of encounter rather than construct representative ideal types. (Vaninni, 2015: 15)

Using methodological strategies of vitality, performativity, corporeality, sensuality, and mobility, researchers can engage in more creative and more performative practices (Vannini, 2015). Such an orientation demands the means by which to engage, research and re-present the sensory experiences, emotions, affective atmospheres and flows of life. Hawkins (2015), for example, refers to the use of visual art, image-making, creative writing, and performance techniques to do this. Pallett and Chilvers draw on this ‘messy-methods’ approach to engage with organizational knowledges and practices at the science-policy interface and argue that they are ‘co-produced with and through networks incorporating external spaces, bodies and processes’ (2015: 151). By very explicitly experimenting with their methods of knowledge making in order to understand the diverse effects of these methods, they were able to reflect on the bases of their knowledge claims, challenging conventional understandings and narratives. For the Bawaka Country human and more-than-human collective, paying close attention to Bawaka Country is critical to their research – attending carefully and responsibly to the messages of the flies and mosquitoes, the sound of the gukguk, the calmness of the sea. This enables a decentring of human agency as their research is shaped and enabled through their actions of digging at Bawaka, collecting miyapunu mapu, turtle eggs, and going night fishing for waku, mullet (Bawaka Country et al., 2013, 2015a, 2015b; Burarrwanga et al., 2013).

IV More-than-human research relationships: Collaborating and author-izing

Employing conventional methodologies in new ways through nuanced more-than-human analyses, and enabling new methodologies to emerge as we have outlined above, have significant implications for the production of knowledge. In particular, research needs to move beyond only incorporating the ‘voice’ of ‘the more-than-human’ in the methodological doings and toward the implications of decentring human agency for thinking in human geography. This entails challenging, and moving away from, the privileging of the speaking, rationally reflective human agent/research that continues, implicitly at least, to frame knowledge production in the social sciences and humanities. Geographers have started doing this crucial work – they are opening up exciting avenues for collaborating as part of more-than-human collectives, and they are challenging human-centred author-ity.

There is a range of interesting work which does not specifically engage with the more-than-human but challenges the notion of author-ity, including the Autonomous Geographies Collective (2010), scholar-activist collaborative research (Driscoll-Derickson and Routledge, 2015) and the use of inter-disciplinary methods between the natural and social sciences (Taylor and Hamilton, 2014). This work also leads us to look to new ways of employing method and outcome to de-centre dominant forms of collaboration and enable new engagements and relationships to form. Two recent papers pay attention to practices of analysis and writing as ways of de-centring human authority. Mindfulness techniques were the focus of Whitehead and colleagues’ (2016) reflections. In particular, they argue that, in drawing attention to the body, mindfulness is more than an effective means of research engagement. In infiltrating analysis, mindful awareness can support a more than rational geography and less reductive conclusions. Rose (2016) likewise develops an argument about the source and security of authorial authority using stories. He reflects on how and where thinking emerges and the shape knowledge takes. For Rose, stories and the figure of the scribe become means of earnestly acknowledging the others that give rise to thought and, as a result, queries the certainty and exclusivity of the academic voice.

Who/what is the author and its presumed individuality is also being challenged in more-than-human ways. Gibson-Graham and Roelvink (2010: 343) advocate a hybrid research collective of human and non-human actants to stimulate ‘world-changing processes’. Pitt (2015) also grapples with the challenge of researching more-than-humans without speaking for them. This is more than giving an increasing voice to more-than-humans; it is about making space for new ‘voices’ and using the experience as a stimulus for reflection, e.g. ‘what am I being shown?’, and for future actions of attending. Two of us (Lloyd and Suchet-Pearson) are part of an Indigenous and non-Indigenous, human and more-than-human, collective whose long-term collaboration emphasizes the agency of place, and its co-constitution with and as humans, in radical ways. In our research and writing we have begun to take very seriously the more-than-human research contribution made by Bawaka Country, an Australian Indigenous homeland in North East Arnhem Land. We have acknowledged the way Bawaka Country enables and shapes our work by authoring our collaborative work as Bawaka Country, including the Indigenous and non-Indigenous human authors (Bawaka Country et al., 2013, 2015a, 2015b, 2016). Country incorporates land, sea and rivers, as well as animals, tides, waters, winds, insects, rocks, plants, languages, emotions, songs and ancestors (Kearney and Bradley, 2009; Rose, 1999). Country also encompasses human beings, hence Bawaka Country is not an additional author of our work but an all-encompassing authority that includes the human authors. This is not only an attempt to decentre human-as-authority, but it is an ethical response to the non-Indigenous authors’ positionality as they have been adopted into family in North East Arnhem Land and find themselves enmeshed in rich kinship relationships with a range of more-than-humans – kinship relationships that bring with them a range of ethical obligations including the need to attend, share and care.

Woodward et al. (2015) discuss the creation of a new collective individual through the repolarization of relations between human collaborators and an active, problem-producing technical object. In their study of human-computer interactivity in the context of Hurricane Katrina, they examine the collaborative process of building complex visualizations. By analysing email conversations within this collaborative effort they discover a kind of individuation forged through a double movement: ‘where the technical object actively introduces its own problematic field, the experts are swept up as participants in its resolution, just as the technical object, in Simondon’s account, brings with it some of the human in its constitution’ (Woodward et al., 2015: 508). Drawing on Indigenous geographical scholarship, including their ongoing dialogues with Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and places in Aotearoa/New Zealand, the United States and Canada, Larsen and Johnson (2016: 2, 5) propose placework as a methodology ‘grounded in the agency of place’ and ‘attentive to the ways specific places manifest this agency’: in particular the ways place speaks, creates and teaches. Larsen and Johnson conceptualize a more-than-human geographical self in which ‘subjectivities are grounded in, and accountable to, land-based relationships and knowledges’ (2016: 1). Through explicit acknowledgement of more-than-human geographical agencies, responsibilities and power, placework should inspire more respectful, responsible, collaborative and creative more-than-human geographical praxis in the Anthropocene.

V More-than-human praxis: New ways of co-producing knowledge, action and power

Conceptual and methodological innovation should work hand in hand – and exciting things are emerging both conceptually and methodologically when it comes to more-than-human work in (more-than-) human geography. However, this review has shown that some of geography’s most recent conceptual ‘turns’ have not yet been accompanied by similar methodological shifts and, importantly, practical action which contributes to a reconfiguration of power relationships in an age of ever increasing inequality, injustice and unsustainability. By way of conclusion we briefly reflect, in a deliberately open-ended way, on some of the absences in this burgeoning work.

For example, as Castree (2015) points out, human geography remains overwhelmingly reliant on textual representation, on the written word and an ability (and desire) to read. Even work on the visual is written about, and we are currently writing this for you to read. Perhaps this is one of the major blockages stunting movement in methodological innovation, stopping more-than-human geography keeping pace with some of its conceptual insights. If researchers limit their work to dominant academic forms of communication, how can we engage with more-than-human worlds on terms which decentre a Eurocentric human privileging? In designing research perhaps researchers need to think more carefully about the human-more-than-human co-production not only of the research relationships but of the communication, presentation and impact of results – how it is then used, by whom and for whom?

If different types of knowledge are to emerge in and through these more-than-human methodologies then researchers need to push themselves further – they need to take seriously the ontological politics which have silenced and rendered invisible so many more-than-human agencies over time, and they need to enable work which ‘practices what it preaches’ in terms of engagement and collaboration. Critically, they need to take the ethical challenge of de-centring human control into praxis. They need to de-centre the human-in-geography in disciplinary terms but also more broadly. Sarah Whatmore’s (2013) work is inspiring in terms of bringing theory and praxis together – in this case bringing together a range of human and more-than-human actors, whose collaboration was facilitated through a ‘slowing down’ of reasoning around flood mitigations responses in the UK, to enable new political and technical possibilities.

Geography as a discipline continually shifts and turns to specific domains and approaches – the critical turn, the cultural turn, the relational turn, the computational turn, the communicational turn, the mobilities turn, the creative turn, the performative turn, the animal turn, etc. (see Sui and DeLyser, 2012; Buller, 2014a, 2014b). Creating a hall of mirrors difficult to break out of (Rose, 1999)? Indeed an ability to let go of the maypole and enable our methodologies to ‘dance a little’ (Thrift, 2003, Latham, 2003, Vannini, 2015, Woodward et al., 2015), or ‘go digging’ (Bawaka Country et al., 2015a), is most certainly required as we grapple with the conceptual, methodological and political challenges of conducting research in, with and as more-than-human worlds.