Situating Methods

Abstract

To affirm that methods are practices that build realities is nowadays a phrase that any STS scholar would agree with. However, we should not take this statement for granted. Therefore, we invite panelist to reflect on how our research contexts are affecting the methodologies we use. For example, how do realities which have been crosscut by colonial legacies, configure responsible base methodologies? How can we incorporate a postcolonial and decolonial feminist perspective to the design of our research project? If we consider that knowledge is situated, then the methods used to create this knowledge should be situated as well. But what does situating methods mean? How do we situate methods? Why do we need to do this and how can we do it without falling into relativity traps? We invite panelists who wish to share their experiences and reflexions on the different methods they have used (arts-based methods, participatory methods, experimental methods, etc.) to an open discussion on the situatedness and enmeshedness of the practices we use to explore social problems, on how methodologies are susceptible of being coopted in contexts of alternative facts, the uprise of new Sokal controversies, and on the will and need to invent decolonial research practices.

Individual Presentations

• A Situated Reading of a Design Practitioner: A Spiral Tale About Women Who Protest - Amanda Windle, London College of Communication, University of the Arts, London

• Complicating Digital "Echo-Chambers" - Ane Kathrine Gammelby, Aarhus University

• (In)appropriate Methods in the Space of Interaction - Yelena Gluzman, UC San Diego

• Photo-Ethnography, Political Manifestations, and More-Than-Human Performance on Public Space - Pablo Ignacio Hermansen, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile; Roberto Fernandez, Universidad de Chile

Session Organizers

• Sandra Patricia Gonzalez-Santos, Universidad Anahuac

• Tania Pérez-Bustos, National University of Colombia