Apologies for cross-postings... Please note additional session.

Call for papers / panellists

Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, 7-11 March, 2006, 
Chicago, USA

THE EMOTIONAL GEOGRAPHIES OF ‘DOING ETHNOGRAPHY’

The Qualitative Methodology Speciality Group is sponsoring a series of 
four "Doing Ethnography" sessions. Three of these are panel sessions 
organised by Katie Walsh and Rebecca Sheehan, exploring the themes 
of 'bodies', 'mobilities' and 'representations'. The fourth is a paper 
session, organised by David Butz and Samah Sabra, focusing 
on 'autoethnography' as a way of approaching these overlapping themes. 
Calls for papers for these four sessions are copied below. Please note 
variations in how to make your reply and deadlines.


PANEL SESSIONS

The emotional geographies of 'doing ethnography' 1: BODIES 
The emotional geographies of 'doing ethnography' 2: MOBILITIES 
The emotional geographies of 'doing ethnography' 3: REPRESENTATIONS 

Session organisers:
Katie Walsh, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
Rebecca Sheehan, Louisiana State University, USA
 
There are a few spaces left across these panel sessions. We would like to 
invite those who are currently active in ethnographic research, or 
involved in theoretical debate about the use of ethnography in 
geographical analysis, to participate.

We envision these sessions as relatively informal and open discussions 
that will provide a safe space for geographers to reflexively discuss 
ethnographic research. An emphasis will be placed on using personal 
experiences, dilemmas, and feelings in the field. We welcome those doing 
ethnography for a graduate thesis as well as more experienced researchers. 
There will be the opportunity to begin informal conversations by email 
before meeting at the conference. We hope that the sessions will help to 
move us beyond ‘shoulds’ in the geographies of ethnographic research by 
stimulating provocative debate and pushing ethnographic research out of 
any comfort zone! Instead, we’d like to see an increasing diversity in 
ideas about how ethnography could be done, what ethnographers can ‘admit’ 
to feeling, and ways in which ethnographic research is represented. 

Below is a provisional guide to the sessions as we currently anticipate 
their content. Contributors should not feel restricted to these 
guidelines, but participants who wish to address the following themes are 
especially welcome. Participating on one or more panels at the AAG does 
not prohibit you from participating in a paper session.

If you wish to discuss a potential contribution to any of these 3 
sessions, please contact Katie Walsh ([log in to unmask]) and Rebecca 
Sheehan ([log in to unmask]) by 30th September at the latest, stating which 
session you are interested in. Please give a brief explanation, in a 
sentence or two, of how your research experience has raised questions that 
relate to a particular session. Any questions are welcome…


The emotional geographies of ‘doing ethnography’ 1: BODIES

This session will consider how focussing on emotional geographies of 
fieldwork challenge us to reconsider the role of the senses in collecting 
ethnographic material that is felt in corporeal ways and how highlighting 
emotions in ethnography makes it a potentially more sensitive research 
method. It will also raise questions about when it might be appropriate to 
integrate accounts of position and location, as felt through a diversity 
of bodies, within ethnography more generally, rather than treating 
reflexivity as a separate part of research.   
   

The emotional geographies of ‘doing ethnography’ 2: MOBILITIES

This session will consider the emotional experiences of ‘doing 
ethnography’ in terms of the corporeal and discursive journeying / 
movement / travelling  /spatiality it involves. It hopes to open the way 
for more honest and fluid accounts of ethnographic research that challenge 
traditional preoccupations with distance and distinctions between field / 
academy, here / there, researchers / participants (etc.) that are proving 
remarkably persistent. In an attempt to explore the more personal side of 
physical relocation and movement, special attention will be given to the 
negotiation of home(s) and intimacy during the research process in (trans)
national and domestic ethnographic work. 


The emotional geographies of ‘doing ethnography’ 3. REPRESENTATIONS 

This session will ask how more flexible and creative geographical 
ethnography might present a challenge to conventional forms, medium, 
content, and styles of ethnographic representation. It will identify and 
explore some alternative representational spaces currently being used by 
geographers, including video, poetry, art, photography, and the internet 
(and others?). Particular attention will be given to exploring the way 
that using such alternative methods might help geographers to respond to, 
include, and perhaps evoke, emotion through their research.
 

PAPER SESSION

The emotional geographies of 'doing ethnography' 4: AUTOETHNOGRAPHIES

Session Organisers: 
David Butz, Brock University, Canada
Samah Sabra, McMaster University, Canada

We are seeking papers that use – or interrogate the use of – the concept 
of autoethnography in geographical research.

Geographers share with other social scientists an interest in building 
critical reflexivity into the research process, as both a political and 
epistemological strategy. Increasingly the notion of “autoethnography” is 
being used as a resource for developing a reflexive and critical attitude 
towards our research practice. 

There are two quite distinct understandings of autoethnography. First, and 
most commonly, autoethnography is understood as “the process by which the 
researcher chooses to make explicit use of [their] own positionality, 
involvements and experiences as an integral part of ethnographic research” 
(Cloke, Crang and Goodwin 1999, 333): a research practice that involves 
the "turning of the ethnographic gaze inward on the self (auto), while 
maintaining the outward gaze of ethnography, looking at the larger context 
wherein self experiences occur" (Denzin 1997: 227). In this context, the 
notion of autoethnography is often applied to research in which the self 
is both researcher and research subject, as in the work of Carolyn Ellis, 
for example, in her writings on chronic illness.
 
The second conceptualization of autoethnography was first articulated by 
Mary Louise Pratt in her book Imperial Eyes (1992, 7), to “refer[s] to 
instances in which colonized subjects undertake to represent themselves in 
ways that engage with the colonizer’s own terms. If ethnographic texts are 
a means by which Europeans represent to themselves their (usually 
subjugated) others, autoethnographic texts are those the others construct 
in response to or in dialogue with those metropolitan representations... 
autoethnography involves partial collaboration with and appropriation of 
the idioms of the conqueror.” Pratt’s conceptualisation can be extended 
beyond a strictly colonial context to describe one of the ways groups 
occupying subordinate positions in particular discourses express 
themselves to representatives of groups occupying dominant positions in 
those discourses. In this use of the concept, autoethnography is not 
something researchers do, but something their research subjects do (often 
in relation to researchers) that they may want to study. One way to study 
the self-representations of “Others” is by nurturing an autoethnographic 
sensibility as an epistemological and political position (Besio & Butz, 
2004; Butz & Besio, 2004).

There are clearly overlaps between the two uses of the term: both involve 
a certain amount of reflexivity and focus on meaning-making as a 
contextual process. In both cases, the autoethnographic author is 
representing something in relation to which s/he is an “insider” and their 
discussion of their personal experiences entails some commentary on the 
larger social/cultural contexts of those experiences. And in both cases, 
the success of the strategy relies on the sensibilities of its audience 
(Sabra, 2005). 

So far no concerted efforts have been made carefully to trace the links 
between these two understandings of autoethnography. We are interested in 
papers that develop either (or both) understandings of the concept, and 
are particularly interested in gathering a set of papers that may as a 
group illuminate some of the epistemological and methodological 
connections or tensions between the two conceptualizations.


If you think you may be interested in participating in this session please 
contact David Butz as soon as possible, so that we can get a sense of how 
much interest there is. 

To present a paper you must do the following before October 13, 2005:

1.  Compose an abstract following the AAG guidelines:
http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/Chicago2006/paper.cfm

2.  Register online with the AAG to obtain a personal ID number, or print 
the registration form and mail to AAG with your non-refundable Program 
Participation Fee:
     AAG Annual Meeting
     1710 Sixteenth Street NW
     Washington, D.C. 20009-3198

4.  Email Presenter Identification Number (PIN) and Abstract before
October 13, 2005 to David Butz: [log in to unmask]

For further information please