Vamos a Caminar: Chicana/Latina Feminist Walking Plática Methodology to Honor the Body and Facultad

• In Event: Chicana/Latina Feminista Pláticas in Educational Research: Methodological Considerations and Tensions

Abstract

Objective: Following the tradition of Chicana/Latina feminist nuevas teorias, I offer walking pláticas as a methodology for qualitative research that honors the brown body and facultad as a means to contextualize our relationship to the land while caminando y platicando alongside participants. I discuss walking pláticas by first explicating how I came to this work as a non-Black and non-Indigenous Mexicana from the Tijuana-San Diego borderlands. I then provide an overview of two methodologies that inspired walking pláticas: walking interviews and pláticas. The discussion on walking pláticas presents six key elements to consider when engaging in this Chicana/Latina feminist educational research methodology. I conclude by discussing humanizing research with Communities of Color while recentering the brown body.

Theoretical Frameworks: A walking plática methodology centers the theoretical contributions of Chicana/Latina feminisms by acknowledging the body as a source of herstory, knowledge, and resistance (Calderón et al., 2012; Delgado Bernal & Elenes, 2011; Hernández Juárez, 2014; Lara, 2002; Latina Feminist Group, 2001). Specifically, the work of Anzaldúa (1987), Cruz (2006), and Pendleton Jiménez (2006) serve as pillars from which to study facultad and the brown body as a site of memory that is central to understanding the spatial experiences of Women and People of Color. Examining how the brown body prompts place-based memory and language as the body traverses different spaces is central to exploring the political, geographic, and corporeal lives of participants within specific environments and spaces including homes, schools, communities, institutions, and nation-states.

Methods and Data Sources: The methodology of walking pláticas draws from a qualitative study on the borderlands in which this methodology was first designed and applied. Additionally, walking pláticas builds from higher education method of walking interviews (Harris, 2016) and a Chicana/Latina feminist plática methodology (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016). Thus, this article is methodological in nature and draws from conceptual theorizations and empirical data from my qualitative study.

Findings: Walking pláticas’ six elements contend that the process of walking through a familiar environment: (a) honors Chicana/Latina feminist epistemologies and researcher reflexivity; (b) leads to data collection taking place in an environment familiar to the participant; (c) elicits rich, place-based personal and community memories; (d) underscores participants’ facultad, perceptions, and holistic lived experiences; (e) explores the land, spatiality, and geographic realms; and (f) incorporates sensory data emergent from the body. The identified elements serve as a point of departure from traditional qualitative methods that dismiss the brown body as a corporeal, political, and geographic site of inquiry while concurrently offering us the opportunity to nurture the unexplored possibilities of Chicana/Latina feminist walking pláticas.

Significance: Walking pláticas build upon a robust herstory of qualitative innovations that dismantle the white gaze present in research. Specifically, the strengths of walking pláticas include the consideration of spatiality through Chicana/Latina feminisms to exploring how people make sense of and are influenced by space—a great methodological tool for critical educational researchers seeking to understand the role of geography, the land, and physical and social contexts on people’s lives.

Author

• Tanya J. Gaxiola Serrano, University of Texas at San Antonio