Positionalities as Practicing Place in Postcritical Ethnography

• In Event: Reclaiming Positionality as Methodological Praxis for Truth-Telling in Education Research

Abstract

This paper considers the concept of positionalities as inevitably intermingled with practices of place qualitative researchers enact in their work. I bring together perspectives from postcritical ethnography and critical/feminist geography to interrogate the role of positionalities, as practices of place, in the doing of research. I share my own imperfect, incomplete interrogation of positionality as practicing place by offering stories (e.g., Somerville, 2013) from a four year postcritical ethnographic project I worked on from 2013 to 2017 with white educators in the rural rustbelt Midwest as together we explored intersections of their school and the White majority postindustrial micropolitan where it was located. (Re)turning to this project, informed by Ulmer’s (2017) slow ontology, I (re)consider how my research alongside these teachers might inform critical qualitative research that seeks a “moral edge” and recognizes the damage of grand narratives of research object(ives), and researcher (Anders, 2019; Noblit et al., 2004). I orient to positionalities as practices of place, in particular for white researchers, as approaches to dig into the specificity of language and interaction fieldwork demands and to connect to systemic histories and presences of violence this work surfaces.
Tuck & McKenzie (2014) proposed that place is practice - social action and materiality intermingled (see also, Scollon, 2013). Massey (2005) argued that the doing of place is always, inevitably in process, unfinished. Such a stance acknowledges, following Cresswell (2009), that place as practice, then, is not a secure ontological thing. Indeed, practices of place are thick with potential pitfalls and consequences unseen, both discursive and material, often related to very unique representational and material attributes and impacts, and alongside systemic power geometries that do damage (Massey, 2005). Here I argue this matters because we as researchers practice place in unfinished ways ourselves as we participate in fieldwork, interpret our data constructions, and seek to represent our learning (Anders, 2012). This work, all of it, is part of research process and product that is all too often left uninterrogated in terms of how much place might inform, disrupt, and create productive struggle that will benefit the aims of educational research in terms of a pursuit of truth(s) and justice.
I share three stories which collectively brought opportunities for me to interrogate how place was practiced as I worked alongside my teacher-collaborators. These stories surface how (white) racialized and geographically specific identities are hidden in plain sight, often through nimble, complicit practices of place based in language, history, and material impact. Bringing critique to bear on my embodied experience as a white Midwestern woman involved much more than a naming of geographic location and racial identification: instead my stories point to the relational nature orienting to positionality as practices of place offers. In thinking of positionalities in this way I found space to be better prepared to identify when to act alongside my participants, when I simply was at a loss, and how to tell stories that honor discomfort, horror, grief, and complicity (Anders & Lester, 2019; Childers, 2011).

Author

• Alexandra Panos, University of South Florida
  Presenting Author