Lives lived differently: Geography and the study of black women

Abstract

This paper considers the geographical study of black women’s lives through a reflection on Jacqueline Tivers’ (1978) “How the other half lives: the geographical study of women.” While feminist geographers have drawn on black feminist thought, the limited presence of black women academics within the discipline of Geography contributed to a lack of sensitivity to the distinctiveness of black women's geographies. The paper notes the considerable body of work that has emerged since Tivers’ paper, including that which challenges the universalisation of concepts of women, gender, family, and the household, especially in relation to black women’s lives globally. It asserts the globality of black women’s “lifeways” – especially the interconnections between continental Africa and the African diaspora – and suggests that a more relational approach to the study of black women’s lives could inform geographers’ understanding of gendered and racial structures of oppression and alternative geographies of resistance and freedom.

Qualitative research methods I: Emotionally engaged approaches to working with vulnerable participants

“…This work reinforces the ethos of ‘do no harm’ with the incorporation of creative techniques of dialogue and listening that at times challenge qualitative epistemologies in human geography in order to rethink how we frame ‘lives lived differently’ (Daley, 2020). The first section of this report will address the need for attentiveness to emotionally engaged research in the context of intense interpersonal encounter when working with pain, the second provides insight into methods utilised to minimise harm, and the final section will address the need for new forms of institutional scaffolding and research training to support work with vulnerable groups.…”

“…This poses a series of challenges for qualitative approaches, particularly when working with people in psychological and physical pain, such as refugees, victims of sexual and racial violence, those in the criminal justice system, those who grieve. Working with vulnerable groups has been widely influenced by feminist and post-colonial methodologies that attempt to flatten power relations between researcher and participants, to ‘empower’ or give voice, and to acknowledge the impact of researcher standpoint (Aroussi, 2020; Daley, 2020; Dempsey, 2018; Hagan, 2021; Jordan and Moser, 2020; Sleijpen et al, 2016; Wimark et al, 2017).…”

Boys are tired! Youth, urban struggles, and retaliatory patriarchy

“…Geographers have long been attentive to the problem of patriarchal oppression and its reproduction. Several studies, whether explicitly or implicitly influenced by black feminist scholarship, have employed an intersectional approach to demonstrate patriarchy’s entanglement with the promotion of racist‐capitalist inequitable relations (Daley, 2020; Johnson, 2019; Kobayashi & Peake, 1994; Rose, 1990). This work has been complemented by scholarship highlighting the need to recognise patriarchy's empirical complexity and institutional variations both spatially and temporally (Duncan, 1994; Hopkins, 2006; Jackson, 1991; Smith, 1990).…”

Response to commentaries on Patricia Daley and Amber Murrey's ‘Defiant scholarship: Dismantling coloniality in contemporary African geographies’.

“…(Daley, 2020: 798). They have been 'subjected to a range of de-humanizing and exclusionary practices that deny their femininity, beauty, cognitive abilities, familial attachments and the importance of their labour both in the public and private spheres, even when attempts are being made to control their reproductive capabilities' (Daley, 2020). Mobilizing theories developed in the North by black women is not a panacea to addressing fundamental problems of coloniality in African societies.…”