Qualitative methods III

Abstract

In this, our third and final snapshot of contemporary qualitative research methods, we pick up on the proliferation of non-representational theory across human geography and focus on research methods concerned with practices that exceed (more than) representation or are non-representational. We chart work that pays attention to the non-visible, the non-verbal and the non-obvious, as well as methods and methodologies that enable researchers to grasp and grapple with assemblages, relationalities, and life as it unfolds. We characterize these ‘more-than representational’ methodologies as: experimenting with approaches to research, using picturing as an embedded research methodology, and highlighting research as sensing. We conclude that these have opened new forms of knowledge, including into subdisciplines like health geography. Nonetheless, a privileging of written and visual modes of thinking and representing remain, and the discipline must be vigilant to nurture and value the emerging work on neural diversity and non-Western modes of thinking.