Reflexivity and Positionality in Feminist Fieldwork Revisited

Nagar, Richa; Geiger, Susan

doi:10.4135/9781446212240.n23

Cited by 134 publications

(67 citation statements)

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“…In order to research these strategies, I conducted multi-sited fieldwork based for four months at the employers' association in the Santiago trade zone followed by six months focused on research with laid-off garment workers, the partial glimpse at a process of subject production, a process that can neither be separated from, nor reduced to, the research relationship (Haraway 1991;Nagar and Geiger 2007).…”

Section: Introduction: Rethinking the Spaces And Subjects Of Global Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

Embodied negotiations: identity, space and livelihood after trade zones in the Dominican Republic

Werner

2010

Gender, Place & Culture

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In this article, I analyze socio-spatial processes of subject-making at the center of the restructuring of export industries. To do so, I develop the concept of 'embodied negotiations' to explain the spatial and corporeal experience of trade zone workers reproduced as migrants with the collapse of garment exports in the Dominican Republic. Drawing on ethnographic research, I examine 'rural return' as both a livelihood strategy and a discourse shaped by inter-related gender and racial ideologies of labour as well as the uneven transnationalization of rural and urban localities. I show how the negotiation of social position by subjects marked by race, gender and class is always also a negotiation of spatial position in and between localities structured through raced, gendered and class relations. Men's efforts to remain in urban areas as a form of social 'whitening' are compared to women's resistance to rural return as an attempt to stay in circulation as paid labour. Overall, I argue that feminist research on global production should be 'spatialized' by attending to livelihoods and practices of subject-making that emerge in parallel to export restructuring.

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Section: Introduction: Rethinking the Spaces And Subjects Of Global Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

Embodied negotiations: identity, space and livelihood after trade zones in the Dominican Republic

Werner

2010

Gender, Place & Culture

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“…(1992: 33) This expansive definition extends Presser's critique (noted above) that we have not written ourselves into our research nearly enough. Rather than scholars simply revealing how their personal identities and evolving thinking shaped their narrative projects, the thrust in the second definition emphasizes how these identities intersect with the institutional, material, and geopolitical aspects of the investigator's position (Nagar and Geiger 2007) that, in turn, made the research possible in the first place. 5 If positionality is to become more than "a recitation of one's personal characteristics, or a textual strategy" (Larner 1995: 177), a stronger reflexivity reflects on the political dimensions of the entire research enterprise.…”

Section: Moving Beyond the Selfmentioning

confidence: 99%

Handbook of Narrative Analysis

Wells¹,

Herman²,

Vervaeck³

2006

The Modern Language Review

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“…Yet as Nagar and Geiger (2007) point out, efforts by researchers to situate themselves in relation to their research have too often focused on the individual researcher's positionality rather than structural relationships that mediate those positionalities. This narrowness, they argue, has foreclosed a discussion of the more compelling questions with which such reflexivity should be concerned, which they consider to be questions about how to produce knowledge without reinscribing the interests of the privileged and how to root knowledge production to material social change in places.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…In contrast, situated solidarities require that we ask how knowledge produced from research might be of use to multiple others without reinscribing the interests of the privileged; and how such knowledge might be actively tied to a material politics of social change that works in the interests of the disadvantaged (Nagar and Geiger, 2007). Moreover, such situated solidarities must be attentive to the historically contingent strategies and modes of thought that might be used to interpret struggles in particular ways and, in so doing, circumscribe them.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, such situated solidarities must be attentive to the historically contingent strategies and modes of thought that might be used to interpret struggles in particular ways and, in so doing, circumscribe them. Academic 'fields' need to be reconfigured in relation to the various 'fields' that our collaborators inhabit (Nagar and Geiger, 2007). Situated solidarities are those that are "attentive to the ways in which our ability to evoke the global in relation to the local, to configure the specific nature of our alliances and comitments, and to participate in processes of social change are significantly shaped by our geographical and socio-institutional locations, and the particular combination of processes, events, and struggles underway in those locations" (273).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Situated solidarities and the practice of scholar-activism

Routledge

Derickson

2015

Environ Plan D

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Grounded in an analysis of an ongoing collaboration with rural peasant movements in Bangladesh, we explore the possibility of forging solidarity through practices of scholar-activism. In so doing, we consider the practice of reflexivity, reconsider forms of solidarity, and draw on the concept of convergence spaces as a way to envision sites of possibility. We draw on the work of Nagar and Geiger's notion of situated solidarities (2007) to propose an alternative form of reflexive practice in scholarship. We then posit that there are 6 "practices" that provide a useful schematic for thinking through the opportunities for the construction of these solidarities.In this paper, we consider the possibility of forging solidarities through practices of scholaractivism. Scholar-activists are those that seek alignment between their academic work "and their political ideals to further social change and work directly with marginal groups or those in struggle" (Autonomous Geographies 2010). Done thoughtfully, scholar-activism practiced through what Nagar and Geiger (2007) call "situated solidarities" can be an effective strategy for producing knowledges that "abide by" (Ismail 2005) the struggles of marginalized communities in ways that refuse but do not ignore the violent and imperialist histories of the academy. By way of illustrating how such solidarities might be achieved in the course of doing scholaractivism, we identify six practices: 'being moved'; 'dispersing power'; 'resourcing potential'; 'resourcing solidarity'; 'challenging assumptions and norms'; and 'sustaining collaboration'. We ground our analysis in recent work conducted by Routledge in Bangladesh with the Bangladesh Krishok (farmer) Federation (BKF) the largest rural-based peasant movement in the country, and the Bangladesh Kishani Sabha (Women Farmers' Association, BKS).In an earlier paper (Derickson and Routledge 2015), we suggested a 'politics of resourcefulness' as a guiding ethos for engaging in the process of doing scholar-activism. This entails commitments to channel the resources and privileges afforded academics to advancing the work of non-academic collaborators; designing research explicitly to ask and answer questions that non-academic collaborators want to know; and engaging in research that explores barriers to sustained and active participation and activism. We also argued that we should engage actively with both sides of the hyphen, emphasizing scholarly work and interventions in scholarly debates as well as resourcing the activist realm. Our intention with this paper is to build on these foundational ethics by engaging the notion of situated solidarities as simultaneously a goal of and a strategy for doing scholar-activism. Situating solidarities of scholar-activismAs social subjects, we act in "a world over-determined by relations of power exploitation, inequality and violence" (Juris and Khasnabish, 2013: 371). Such relations are accentuated with respect to our location in a dominant institution such as a University, that is enro...

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Reflexivity and Positionality in Feminist Fieldwork Revisited

Cited by 134 publications

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Embodied negotiations: identity, space and livelihood after trade zones in the Dominican Republic

Embodied negotiations: identity, space and livelihood after trade zones in the Dominican Republic

Handbook of Narrative Analysis

Situated solidarities and the practice of scholar-activism

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