Black methodologies as ethnomethods: on qualitative methods-making and analyzing the situated work of doing being hybridly human

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper describes qualitative methods-making informed by Black Studies and ethnomethodology. Specifically, I explore resonances and tensions between ethnomethodology and Katherine McKittrick’s theorization of black methodologies to describe an analytic approach to studying how language use and other embodied actions (re)produce humanizing and dehumanizing psychosocial dynamics. Blending insights from these perspectives, I argue for a radical respecification of black life in terms of the real-world practices for and constraints on doing being hybridly human and its associated genres of humanness. To demonstrate my approach, I offer an illustrative sequential-categorial analysis of a black story told in an affinity group for women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Overall, I build a case for analytically divesting from biocentrism to surface the creative and unexpected ways people navigate and attempt to counter racial harm. Such an analytic view provides ways to source ideas about humanizing ways of living, interacting, and worldmaking together.