Using Video-Cued Qi Ethnography in My Mama's Kitchen (Poster 9)

• In Event: Nomadic Visual Inquiries: Explorations in Visual Methodologies Across Disciplines and Paradigms

Abstract

Purpose
Based on Kaomea (2019) and Tobin’s (2019) work on video-cued ethnography, I developed “video-cued Qi ethnography” to conduct my visual inquiry with my mother, a first-generation Chinese immigrant who lived in the southern United States. My research question is: What are the different ways of knowing a Chinese immigrant mother embodies in her life in the United States?
Perspectives
The video-cued ethnography method was first developed through Tobin et al.’s (2009, 1991) studies on preschool in three cultures. Kaomea et. al (2019) further developed this method in the context of Indigenous research, by drawing on the multifocal makawalu methodology, which is a Hawaiian methodology based on “a polyrhetorical way of knowing” (p. 276). Kaomea et. al shifted their research practice to be multifocal, in order to generate coalescing perspectives and honor Hawaiian interactional norms.
Methods
Drawing on Kaomea (2019) and Tobin’s (2019) work, I developed “video-cued Qi ethnography” in this visual inquiry. Qi is a Chinese concept that means breath, spirit and life force. It is the essence of things (human and non-human) that connects everything together. Bennett (2010) also discusses this concept termed as “Shi” to describe the congregated vitality of the human-nonhuman assemblage. Throughout the study, I paid attention to the relationality and connections my mother drew on through Qi. The study started in March 2021. I visited my mother at her home and conducted video recordings during each visit. After 4 visits, I edited the video recordings into a 20-minute film and shared the edited film with my mother. A video-cued interview was conducted based on the final version of the film, and the interview was recorded and transcribed. The analysis of the data did not have a start or end; it was continuous and ongoing, as Qi weaves concepts together in a rhizomatic fashion, ever becoming and in new directions and connections (Deleuze and Guattari, 2003) and “keeps analysis and knowledge production on the move” (Mazzei, 2014, p. 743).
Results
By using video-cued Qi ethnography, I was able to pay attention to my mother’s knowing through her connectivity with Qi. The intentionality behind everything she does in the kitchen through 养 cultivate, 洗 cleanse, 切 cut, 擀 knead, 做 create, 伺 serve, and 品 savor shows her ongoing relationship with the humannonhuman assemblage, as well as the way she transcends the existing boundaries of geographies, time, and cultures in order to be response-able in her ways of being (Rhee, 2020).
Significance
Dillard and Okpalaoka (2011) speak about the “all too common absence of Black voices and voices of scholars of color in the discussions of the meanings and outcomes of the ‘coloring’ of epistemologies” (p. 147). This study seeks to amplify the voices of Asian immigrant women and scholars in defining their own epistemology. The methodology of video-cued Qi ethnography adds to the multiplicity of video ethnography research practices and recenters the voices from the Asian American community against the backdrop of anti-Asian racism and Xenophobia violence following the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Author

• Eleanor Xiaoxiao Mehta, University of Georgia