Love as Relational Ethics in Educational Ethnography

• In Event: Thursday Roundtable Session 12:40 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Ethical Reconsiderations in Qualitative Inquiry (Table 15)

Abstract

This paperl examines the WomenWeLove Project, which centers love as a transformational opportunity to redefine the emotional responsibilities between researchers and participants in educational ethnography. The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate how love ignites (Haraway, 2016) an ethical responsibility to honor the experiences of all women through its affective praxis—an integration of intention and action (hooks, 2001). By choosing to love (Zembylas, 2017; Lanis & Zembylas, 2015a; Lanis & Zembylas, 2015b) the women in this ethnographic project, we center our collective relationships differently and re-orient research as a relational, ethico-political practice (Ahmed, 2004; Zembylas, 2007) that strengthens ethnographic validity and influences the interpretation of data as possibilities of collective becoming (Berlant and Hardt, 2011).

Authors

• Alycia M. Elfreich, Montana State University

• Barbara Dennis, Indiana University