Reducing Methodological Footprints in Qualitative Research

Sustainable Qualitative Inquiry

Every research project leaves a footprint. As a part of informed scholarship, as an orientation to research and an aspect of situating one’s work within different theoretical perspectives, qualitative scholars often discuss their study context(s), participants, knowledge production, and surrounding materiality—sometimes deliberately centering rigor, trustworthiness, and methodological aspects of knowledge (re)production. At the same time, and less frequently, scholars consider the potential and actual costs of their research at the local and global scale. These considerations are invariably monetary and temporal: How much should we budget for the interviews? How should we compensate participants for their time? Very rarely do researchers consider the wider ecological, social, and ethical impacts of their inquiries (see, for example, Bezanson et al., 2013; Schienke et al., 2009). In this article, we raise another question: What is the cost of inquiry when doing research? Every research project is conducted within a broader knowledge economy and ecology—it requires energy and labor, extracts intellectual and material resources, and produces knowledge waste. Bezanson and colleagues (2013) proposed that the ecological impacts of research could include travel, personal trash and waste, diverse research equipment, training, physical and material needs, land use, and so on. Furthermore, any discussions of research as a process that requires personal, social, and material resources and capital is often a function of knowledge and power wrapped up in the politics of education (see also Springgay, 2008), publication, job searches, tenure and promotion, and other political yet embodied aspects of the academy (Mol, 2002; Shahjahan, 2015). Even though knowledge globalization could be seen as important to increasing equitable access to knowledge (e.g., open access publications), much of knowledge globalization is driven by deregulation, privatization, and labor flexibilization (see also Lindio-McGovern, 2011), which, in turn, leads to uneven resources, profits, and transfers of capital (human, knowledge, financial, etc.).

This conceptual article proposes that all methodologies, including qualitative methodologies, create a footprint and mark of consumption akin to the carbon footprint. ¹ We argue it is important for qualitative researchers to consider not just how the design and implementation of new methodologies, information, and data require resources and funding within local contexts, but also how these resources and funding have an impact on a global scale. That is, we suggest researchers consider knowledge production in not just economical, but also ecological terms. ² Research conducted in a knowledge ecology might never become completely knowledge or resources neutral. Yet, it is essential that qualitative scholars consider the ecological footprint and broader impact of their work and how these forces, often associated with consumerism and capitalism, could be anticipated, addressed, reduced, and questioned.

Thus, we offer methodological footprint as a useful concept to think with, one that inspires more ecological uses of methodologies, research resources, knowledge distributions especially in the context of data collection and knowledge creation. Like the excessive use of energy (re)sources, excessive and potentially unnecessary production of new data, information, and evidence should not be regarded as unproblematic, let alone virtuous. That is, the individualist and instrumentalist logic of Western capitalist production that depletes resources (e.g., cutting down forests) and generates damaging excess (e.g., excess carbon emissions) is the same logic that undergirds the knowledge economy (Cantwell, 2014; Peters & Besley, 2006). The risks of runaway knowledge production and consumption are multiple and (un)predictable, including alienating researchers from the social purposes and ethics of their inquires; (re)production of useless information; isolation of research(ers) into disciplinary, institutional, and economic structures; and inequitable hoarding of knowledge within privileged groups, regions, and nations. Therefore, we ask, what is the cost of inquiry of knowledge in research and methodology? How can we describe and potentially measure epistemological sustainability of research and methodology? How can we do this also in the context of qualitative inquiry? Who decides what needs to be measured, by whom, when, and why in considering ecological footprints of knowledge production (see McManus & Haughton, 2006)?

Methodological Footprint

We make three main connections as we grow the “methodological footprint” concept. First, we connect ecology and ecological/relation thinking with qualitative methodology. We wonder about methodological sustainability and ecological responsibility in the context of (qualitative) research and how responsibility is always already entangled with future thinking and therefore oriented to questions of sustainability. Then, we consider methodological footprint as a (by)product of academic capitalism and vital to disrupting elements within academic marketplaces. Finally, we discuss how capitalism fuels methodological production placing profit, unequal distribution of resources, and geographically uneven control of the academic marketplace at the forefront while dismissing and/or refusing more ecologically sustainable options and considerations. Following these connections, we ask how methodological footprint urges us to think differently about knowledge production and suggest possibilities for inquiries that leave smaller footprints. Where might methodological footprint thinking take us?

In environmental studies, the concept of an ecological footprint (EF) guides decision-making related to sustainability and human consumption. According to McManus and Haughton (2006), “The Ecological Footprint measures the impact of consumption and subsequent waste discharge (including consumption of food, housing, transportation, consumer goods and services) by converting impact variables into the single unit of land” (p. 115). The EF metric evaluates the actual pressure put on nature by human consumption habits and actions. More specifically,

Ecological footprint measures how much of the biosphere’s annual regenerative capacity is required to renew the natural resources used by a defined population in a given year . . . the ecological footprint is a standardized estimate of the Earth’s biological carrying capacity required to support humanity’s resource use and waste production. (Venetoulis & Talberth, 2007, p. 441)

EF creates comparisons between used and available natural resources. “When humanity’s footprint is smaller than global biocapacity it is considered sustainable. When it is larger, it is reported to be engaging ecological overshoot or running a negative ecological balance” (Venetoulis & Talberth, 2007, p. 443). That natural resources are limited may seem obvious or intuitive. Perhaps, however, less tangible resources such as emotion and physical labor also have their limits. To what extent is knowledge a limited resource? What knowledge resources do methodologies require to produce more knowledge? What methodological decisions might we make (differently) if we understood knowledge as a precious and limited resource? What reclamation is needed to repair energy imbalances in over-researched communities? Where is knowledge production most needed? What are the biproducts (waste) of knowledge production? How do researchers safely dispose of excess data?

As an example, consider the following study that might have an outsized ecological footprint. A government commissions a review of social services across several remote Indigenous communities. The review involves a large research team, 200+ participants, plane and vehicle travel, administrative coordination, language translation, researcher housing, community hospitality, and so much labor (physical, emotional, intellectual, cultural, etc.) required of Indigenous and non-Indigenous “participants” and “gatekeepers” living in resource scarce communities. All the energy required to do this work may hardly seem warranted, particularly as the research team learns the government has commissioned the same review about once every decade for half a century. The findings of all previous reviews, if not their recommendations, are largely identical and confirm what is already known. Furthermore, the findings have limited distribution (and maybe relevance) beyond their local contexts. Indeed, the current and previous reviews are not commissioned, designed, or resourced to consider the global history of settler Colonialism, fraught relationships between governments and Indigenous peoples, and the alienation of Indigenous peoples from Western and global North modes of knowledge production, rendering any attempts by the research team to invoke them largely performative and administrative.

When situating EF in the context of methodology, it is important to note that methodological footprint is more than methodological impact. Methodological footprint is concerned with lasting and potentially unforeseeable impacts of locally and culturally situated methodological choices. Human use of research and research consumption beyond a collective need can be highly problematic since these forces can create uneven global costs, benefits, geographical, and social impacts. Ecosystems that support local research often extend beyond strict national and geographical borders (see also McManus & Haughton, 2006). The EF’s linear metabolism of cities and land is turned into metabolism of research design and methodology in this article. We need to reduce the costs of research to other people and other ecosystems. We offer another example of potentially ecologically questionable research. A private organization funds a project designed to develop and foster a new, morally driven education reform in K-12 education. The project receives much attention, is deemed ‘well-packaged” and founded on “new ideas.” A large research team is established; various marketing materials are created, published, and disseminated to educators and policy makers. Educator workshops are organized, and local educators and higher education leaders identified. The digital footprint and virtual dissemination of the new reform is well funded and visible. Endless hours of cognitive labor, capacity building of research teams, and marketing resources are allocated to the project. When shared and implemented with K–12 educators, the novel reform is received as awfully familiar. What is perceived by the funder and researchers as novel and virtuous is largely old and already enacted wisdom repackaged into more marketable and seemingly novel reform. How could the footprint of this project be evaluated and justified?

Consumption patterns and values should be a part of methodological conversations and considerations. Institutions and individual researcher’s consumer patterns could be reviewed but also as importantly, institutional consumerism and production habits should be examined. For example, Smithers (2022) proposes that the value of higher education is viewed through calculation, where earning credits and producing income matter. A university’s responsibility is to minimize wasted credits and wasted money. To what extent do researchers have similar responsibilities to minimize wasted knowledge and knowledge costs? Or is knowledge valuable unto itself, a priceless commodity to be generated and obtained at any expense? What and who is this data/knowledge for? What energy is depleted for its generation and metabolism? Is it worth it? What other damages does research replication and re-implication cause to knowledge ecosystems? Who else benefits from research replication besides capitalist and (neo)liberal institutional systems?

An example of who do not benefit from research replication and who have to carefully weigh the cost of knowledge production and dissemination are doctoral students. In exchange for the benefit of “networking” and “presentation” and to potentially promote successful job search, many doctoral students must be prepared to cover the ecological footprint of their knowledge generation and dissemination. Potentially apart from other social issues such as abusive relationships with their advisors, a lack of community support, and so on (Yazan et al., 2023), many international and students of color face financial hardships when attending expensive conferences, workshops, and recruitment fairs where the outcomes and benefits are not guaranteed. For example, doctoral students may seek financial support from their school system to attend conferences and move from hotel to hotel when sharing the room with their colleagues. Therefore, the myth of equal exchange (Massumi, 2018) is blurry, forcing doctoral students to invest in the knowledge enterprise a priori while ultimately supporting the capitalist market, wistfully hoping to benefit from the system later.

Not without irony, we brought the concept and practice of methodological footprint to scholarly audiences at a national conference. We proposed conference participants share with us some forms of scholarly and research waste. More specifically, we asked them to use a piece of paper to document a form/type/example of their research waste and then crumble the paper and throw it away. One of us collected this research waste. We also hoped conference attendees to contribute to our conference-waste-art installation. Some of them did. On their way out of the session participants brought their conference and research waste to us, placed, and inserted their pieces into our conference-waste-art platform by the exit door (see Figure 1). What was the methodological footprint of this presentation? Was the production and marketing of methodological footprint worth it?

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Wasted Conference Installation and Waste Materials.

At the same time, the concept of EF has also faced some criticism. For example, McManus and Haughton (2006) wondered if the complex values guiding the measurement of EF can be converted into money. If so, how will local and differing conditions be taken into account? What are some uneven distributions of risks and resources across local contexts? How are the ethics of asking wealthy and poor countries to follow ecological practices being considered? What is the overall role of inequity in trade? How might the benefits of ecological footprint be considered? How acceptable do policy implementors and practitioners find the notion of ecological footprint? The queries go on and on. In addition, Ponthiere (2009) critiqued ecological footprint measurements for not considering the impacts of human consumption on social welfare and other social factors. Sometimes data and knowledge are vitally needed; sometimes the costs to local and global ecologies are very high. How does research sap local energies and resources? What might we mean by this? What does this look like?

Methodological Footprints and/of the Academic Marketplace

A larger methodological footprint can be driven by a field’s need for progress and disciplinary development, in an academic marketplace where only specific and similar ideas are supported and funded. We draw from methodological excess and surplus value of knowledge to consider the (non)value of methodology and scholarly knowledge. For Massumi excess and surplus value serve as engines of capitalism and he asks how to make “always more from less” rather than “how to do with less” (p. 25). Excesses of research ideas in the academic marketplace offer endless opportunities for knowledge proliferation and multiplication which profit business and academic enterprises. Knowledge capitalism (e.g., Peters & Besley, 2006) and academic capitalism (Cantwell, 2014) illustrate close connections between academic knowledge production and global (research, funded research, and publication) markets, which in turn, benefit from a larger methodological footprint. The results are a positive feedback loop—more research and knowledge produce even more knowledge and profit, which requires more research and knowledge . . . and Runaway knowledge production, demonstrating an academic research market operating in an away “that presupposes not scarcity but processual abundance” (Massumi, 2018, p. 25).

In addition, Spooner (2020) proposed that the production of a critique and critiquing the scholarship of others are fueling the neoliberal academic production machine. Critique sells, it keeps academics busy, rewarding and scolding scholars and their work. Some scholars and communities might view critique as a form of claiming knowledge, exercising power, marking one’s territory, and ultimately advancing knowledge. Yet oftentimes critique leads to little structural change in higher education contexts. Is critique produced for critique’s sake and without any potential for a sustainable change? Does a critique serve as a resource exhausting exercise that generates a bigger and more visible epistemological and methodological footprint? Is the methodological footprint concept a sustainable critique?

Brunila and Hannukainen (2017) proposed that research projects, especially funded projects, rely on a market orientation to the functioning of science—enabling and regulating knowledge production and processes. Under academic capitalism, research approaches and methodologies ideally advance certain political goals such as unified and easily externally evaluated research, seemingly flexible yet streamlined data collection processes and profitable data banks, and simplified approaches to research designed to justify political decisions. Demands of academic capitalism accompany endless accumulation and development in private research contexts and organizations, efficiency of research time, and the centralization of publication and research services and decision-making by research proxies and representatives. How do these forces impact our methodological footprints? What can the accounting for methodological footprints do to disrupt academic capitalism? What do these disruptions look like?

Methodological Footprint Disrupts Capitalist Logics

The efficient and ongoing functioning of the academic marketplace is predicated on (at least) the logics of Western instrumentalism and individualism. Instrumentalism focuses knowledge production entirely on its use-value and means-end-reasoning. In other words, the most valuable element of epistemology has to do with the means to the predetermined end (DaVia, 2022). Might current citation practices, citing kin, and citing oneself exemplify yet another form of consumerism and academic capitalism (see Kuecker, 2021; Russell, 2016)? Or might intentional citation practices and deep engagement with one’s prior work be seen as conserving and recycling knowledge?

In education, knowledge of students’ reading achievement is useful for administering new lesson plans, evaluating teacher performance, assigning letter grades to schools. Often unthinkable, when instrumentalism reigns, are axiological and ethical considerations about the craft or art of teaching and what teaching is for in the first instance (Biesta, 2010). Methodological footprint disrupts instrumental logic in inquiry, ideally it effects a pause in research design to consider ethical questions. Not just ethical questions related to the treatment of “human subjects,” but broader questions like those posed above: What are we doing this for? How does this study resonate within a global context of inequitable distribution of (economic, knowledge, energy) resources? To what extent does this study deplete resources and energy (human and non-human)? Is this study worth it?

Methodological footprint also disrupts the logic of individualism—the pernicious idea that Earthly entities are distinct, separable, and the end points of instrumental governing and decision-making. In the academic marketplace, researchers generate independent research agendas that are enumerated and evaluated at the level of the researcher. This individualist bent extends beyond the single human to account for the productions of research teams, departments, colleges, universities, centers, businesses, disciplines, states, nations, and so on. When nations make decisions in their own self-interests, in the name of production, they fail to “conceive of the possibility that what they do affects all regions of the world” (Butler, 2020, p. 43). Just as instrumentalism leaves little space for ethical thinking, individualism closets the many ways academics rely on each other to generate ideas, share resources, and sustain inquiries. It is as if interdependence is something shameful, to be hidden.

Considering the methodological footprint of inquiry may require thinking against individualism and with interdependence about inquiry. Interdependence means thinking ecologically, globally, with the (real) assumption that humans are born into dependent relationships, that their very existence depends on social, material, and environmental structures (Butler, 2020). Foregrounding interdependence, the idea that one’s existence depends on the thriving of others’, may also invoke (or be invoked by) an increased capacity for care (The Care Collective, 2020). Methodological footprint thinking means any knowledge sought and produced in inquiries should be done so with care and respect to its global obligations, considered in light of the question, adapted from Butler (2020): How does this knowledge, the way we go about using and obtaining it, the energy it requires, and the potential excesses it produces “serve all inhabitants of the world, human and animal”? (p. 44). What globally minded methodological decisions might footprint thinking imply? How might researchers enact knowledge-neutral designs? How might researchers conduct inquiries that “give back” to the knowledge grid?

An example of interdependent and non-instrumental methodological footprint thinking in research is meditation as an autoethnographic inquiry to examine self and its relationality with other matters and structures (Trinh, 2020, 2021). The idea of meditation is not to reach out (to do more) but to reach in to do with less, pushing against the academic capitalist marketplace that always asks for abundant publications for ranking, tenure and promotion while devaluing, for example, a series of life event data to rethink what it means to be “inside” or “outside” and disrupt the distinction between system and process. In the meditatively autoethnographic inquiry method, the researcher is provoked to think about care for self and for others in an interdependent relationship and to value knowledge not as a product but a collective practice, with the power to resist pressures of capitalist institutions.

Possibilities for Leaving Smaller Qualitative Methodological Footprints

The notion of ecological footprint in the context of qualitative inquiry brings forward multiple questions, and possibilities. Qualitative researchers could consider how to approach scholarship and knowledge production in more sustainable ways; ways that are also collectively responsible. They might proceed with ecological responsibilities and research approaches that illustrate principles of sustainability, companion-based inquiries, and ecological research designs that consider costs, access, distribution, and equity. Some scholars such as Stengers (2018) and Ulmer (2017) have advocated for slow science to counter academic capitalism and the acceleration of excess (knowledge). To “slow down” or to yield to (academic) capitalism and work within its demands is always a choice (see for alternative example, Escobar’s (2018) and other South American scholars’ work on pluriverse]. How might slowing down and collective “ownership and authorship” change methodological footprints? What happens when knowledge is understood as produced within entangled knowledge ecosystems, or what Flint and Cannon (2022) describe as the “feminist swarm” they became doing their dissertations together, apart? If knowledge is communal, produced in feminist ecologies with long histories and futures, what do the results of any one qualitative research project look like, what are they said to ‘add’? How can we do research that not only promotes speed, or how fast we finish a project and publish it, but also that considers “the entanglement of being, creating, and producing” in qualitative research? (Ulmer, 2017, p. 202). Slowing down might also involve recycling or repurposing old research ideas and materials. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ulmer and Salvo (2023) produced many abstracts that never saw their way to presentation or publication. Perhaps these abstracts were intellectual waste, or perceived as a waste of time? But recycled in the context of a publication on the value of sharing ideas that other scholars may take up and develop, they are repurposed and potentially made useful (again). Or maybe they are repackaged to increase scholarly output.

Slowing down correctives, un-doings of qualitative inquiry, are important in the history of the field as decades of writing, thinking, and arguing have resulted in power, politics, and social justice being (re)introduced into qualitative research designs. Drawing from Manning’s work, Smithers (2022) emphasized the value of “the infrathin,” of moments which escape our attention and lived lives which are not characterized through (normative) narratives genres. Slow correctives set the stage for qualitative inquiry and ask the question of the limits of thoughts to think the unthinkable (Koro & Wolgemuth, 2022). However, at the same time (and always), they run the risk of becoming streamlined, homogenized, and territorialized. Slow correctives can so easily be released from their holding patterns and be drawn into the flow of progress and neoliberal structuring devices. Footprint thinking is necessarily ongoing and potentially undermines the forces and structures of academic production in the knowledge economy.

One could also consider how to utilize research processes in more nomadic ways, which enable less individual ownership of methodologies and more social and ecological distribution of knowledges and findings. Nomadic scholars may flow and transform continuously. Nomadism requires its actors to be more tuned to the systems, ecologies, land, materiality, and things and forces that surround us as scholars. Ready-made paths, predetermined directions, and prefabricated material encounters rarely work for nomadic travelers and inquirers. Nomads are less interested in knowledge production and outcomes. That is, if the nomadic inquirer produces knowledge, it is not as a product, not as a stable thing. Nomadic inquires may yield momentary insights, flashes of knowing that are as embodied as they are understood, experienced, and lived. From this perspective knowledge is not possessed and individually acquired but can be recognized and actualized only within networks, nodes, and intersections. Nomads become one with their surroundings and ecologies, they unite with shifting cultural landscapes, and they invent their paths and actions in relation to the other and environment while potentially encountering and co-creating something which could be recognized as situated knowledges.

Instead of knowledge as a commodity, nomads create concepts and styles of thought that open differences and alternative paths for thinking. Methodologies are freely distributed. Deleuze and Guattari (1980/1987) refer to nomad science as singularities of matter and traits of expression lodging on the level of these material and affective connections. Relays, intermezzos, and resurgences:

The nomad has a territory; he follows customary paths; he goes from one point to another; he is not ignorant of points . . . nomad goes from point to point only as a consequence and as a factual necessity . . . [nomadic trajectory] distributes people (or animals) in an open space. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987, p. 380)

Nomads move based on factual necessity and not to get from one point to another. Spacetime might become un-coded and a passage for unstructured and layered experiences (see also St. Pierre, 1997). In the context of qualitative inquiry, scholarly nomads would generate data, knowledge, relations based on necessity and as by-products, they are known for not collecting, not producing, not moving with directionality while moving. Rhythms of inquiry process may no longer work in sync with academic production machines (see also Sidebottom, 2019). Data and research relations may become accessible only through appearances and different actualizations. Or maybe nomadic knowledges can be found only in memories and traces while knowledge unfolds through enactments.

Where to Go and What to Do Next?

Methodological footprint is a significant concept. It asks scholars to continuously question the role(s), function, and emerging extensions of methodologies, and if the work they propose is needed and (re)justified. It inspires un-doings and problematizations of qualitative inquiry; reduced footprint designs that involve connectivity by reaching out to others for ideas, thoughts, and philosophies to support the reversal of ecological and epistemological injustices. The un-doings come in many colors and shapes: the undoing of governance, the un-tangling of products, and the unthinking of academic capital. These un-doings are important in enabling qualitative inquiry to explore and push borders (of thoughts, of thinkability, of nations, and . . . and . . .), to decolonize its methodologies (Smith, 2012), and to become more ecological.

Striving for a smaller methodological footprint could mean qualitative researchers open-up to diverse and unseen possibilities as repeatedly collectively re-visioned, newly positioned and reconceptualized, and re-practiced (i.e., as post-methods, methodologies without methodology, anti-methodologies, research-creations, and auto/duo/collaborative ethnography) (see Koro-Ljungberg, 2016; Yazan et al., 2023; Manning, 2016; Nordstrom, 2015). Furthermore, Manning’s (2020) pragmatics of the useless also reminds us that value of our work, inquiry, and knowledge is not necessarily pre-given, static, and strictly structured, but it is activated each time anew. How might methodological footprints be recognized and recorded if inputs and materials do not latch into existing structures but appear each time a new and different?

Kuecker (2021) suggests that scholars could resituate their knowledge production matrixes by replacing canonical scholars with relatively unknown scholars. Qualitative researchers could also turn digital waste (papers which do not need to be published) into playlists, poems, and art and then to be deleted from the cloud. This could mean requiring grant agencies and funders to reconsider their (seemingly endless) need for new data. What are “new data” anyway? Or would “new data” be another replication of old findings that continue exhausting resources? Or should all “new data” and knowledge be recycled in some way and form? What if new data and knowledge are publishable only if they are recycled? For example, we recycled our life data from different conferences and events (e.g., plastic plates and knives from the department to demonstrate the waste of products at a university; pins, certificates, and plaques to acknowledge the lifelong contribution to education; or plastic badges from multiple conferences) to provoke the thinking of the attendees for a national conference. These overlooked and excessive material resources that sat unused in our offices were reused and recycled to demonstrate forms of academic waste and returned to our and others’ offices to perhaps be reused again in other academic spaces (or at least as illustrative figures for our paper).

Furthermore, tenure and promotion committees could also acknowledge and encourage professors to recycle data and research and promote extended and global distribution of findings. Same data sets could be shared and analyzed more thoroughly and partially. Research plans could include sections of cost-benefit analysis and how proposed research will be ecologically produced, used, and distributed. Cheek (2017) talks about openness to difference, adding some +s (pluses) to our methodological thinking, and moving from being a part of the problem (i.e., linear analysis, humanistic representation, and overproduction of data/knowledge) toward connections, relationality, and interrelated problems. In addition, scholars could create sustainability contracts which might include a commitment to education, to sourcing existing and durable materials, to having a minimal impact on the environment, and to using the least amount of new data and information (see Bezanson et al., 2013). Methodological footprint is a necessary “plus,” whose addition to methodological thinking moves qualitative research away from forces of knowledge production and consumption toward knowledge sharing and recycling with the potential to renew, repair, and heal unequal and unhealthy ecosystems of research.