Developing a relational solidarity politics in ethnographic research: reflections from a planner

Abstract

Ethnographic research is increasingly common in urban planning, yet few scholars have written about critical engagement with their own positionalities, subjectivities, and privilege while ‘in the field.’ In this article, I reflect on my dissertation research examining the socio-spatial mobilities and aspirations of young people in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic to describe how decolonial thinking and scholarship shifted my research approach and how I understood myself as researcher. I focus on two moments during the dissertation process where what I was seeing, feeling, and experiencing exceeded western understandings of research and the research process. I suggest that two interrelated concepts, cuerpoterritorio and sentipensar, were particularly helpful in revisiting my research design and methodological tools and expanding spaces of learning to other disciplines as a means to question my researcher positionality and proactively develop a relational solidarity politics.