How to Problematise Categories: Building the Methodological Toolbox for Linguistic Reflexivity

Abstract

Following qualitative researchers’ growing interest in reflexivity, a body of scholarship has emerged that aims to turn informal practices for reflexivity into methods that can be learnt and taught alongside other research practices. This literature, however, has focused on helping researchers become more reflexive toward their situatedness and positionality, rather than toward their use of language and its effects on knowledge production – a process I refer to as ‘linguistic reflexivity’. This article addresses this gap by formalising a method for ‘problematising categories’, an informal approach familiar to qualitative researchers as a promising solution to the analytical and ethical blinders that result from scholars’ unconscious use of language. I proceed in three steps. First, I review the literature to show the analytical, empirical and ethical rationales behind this approach and offer a definition of problematising categories as the practice of making conscious how socio-linguistic units of categorisation unconsciously organise our perception and can represent a problem for knowledge production. This practice, I argue, enables us to decentre ourselves from the taken-for-granted nature of those categories. Second, I develop a three-stage research method for problematising categories: noticing ‘critical junctures' when problematisation is called for, identifying the categorical problem through sensitising questions and reconstructing an alternative. Third, I demonstrate how problematising categories contributes to the research process by applying this method to my experience in problematising the binary pair ‘local’ versus ‘international’ in a research project on the environmental impact of Chinese investment in the Senegalese fishery sector. I show that problematising categories leads to more rigorous empirical findings and nuanced analysis in a way that is feasible within the frame of qualitative research projects. Overall, this article expands the practical tools for linguistic reflexivity and heeds the methodological call to make conscious and explicit choices for every dimension of our research.

Revisiting Peshkin: teaching reflexive practice through categorization

“…As noted by Alejandro (2021), there is a great deal of scholarship attempting to support researchers in creating their own "toolbox" for "reflexive research methods" (p. 2). Experts in qualitative research continue to offer insight into both what reflexivity is (Adams, 2021;Ahmed and Buheji, 2018;Henwood et al, 2019) and how to (or how not to) practice it (Alejandro, 2021;Bischoping, 2018;Borgstrom and Ellis, 2021). Within that milieu, Pousti et al (2021) aptly make clear that reflexivity is diversely practiced, taught and written about in qualitative research.…”

“…Since Peshkin wrote his piece in 1988, scholarship regarding subjectivity and reflexive practice in qualitative research has grown considerably. As noted by Alejandro (2021), there is a great deal of scholarship attempting to support researchers in creating their own “toolbox” for “reflexive research methods” (p. 2). Experts in qualitative research continue to offer insight into both what reflexivity is (Adams, 2021; Ahmed and Buheji, 2018; Henwood et al ., 2019) and how to (or how not to) practice it (Alejandro, 2021; Bischoping, 2018; Borgstrom and Ellis, 2021).…”

“…What we discuss in this paper is a bit different. In what follows, we propose an andragogical shift in teaching reflexive practice during which students stretch their thinking to encounter their subjectivities in a way in which they not only create subjective-I's , but they also “problematize” (Alejandro, 2021) the categories their subjective-I's delineate.…”

“…When students engage with and present their subjectivities using Peshkin's categorization of subjective-I's , they analyze their subjectivities and the practice of labeling them. Alejandro (2021) declares that the problematization of categories is as important as categorization itself in qualitative research. While Alejandro (2021) was not specifically referring to categorization during reflective practice, we argue that both the categorization and the evaluation of such categories are integral to students becoming reflexive and rigorous qualitative researchers.…”

Synergetic features of landscape and complex geographic categories

“…That is why under the spatial synergy (or synergistic effect of the space) it should be understood the properties of the last one that entering the contradiction between their actual properties and human activity within their limits are able to generate additional effects, quality, and properties. Spatial synergy forms new qualities of the physical and socio-economic spaces that are useful, beneficial, efficient, cost-effective, and competitive for use in the activities of the individual (Alejandro, 2021).…”