1st Edition

Writing Intimacy into Feminist Geography

Edited By Pamela Moss, Courtney Donovan Copyright 2017
    260 Pages
    by Routledge

    258 Pages 12 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Intimacy, expressed through the feelings and sensations of the researcher, is bound up in the work of a feminist geographer. Tapping into this intimacy and including it in academic writing facilitates a grasping of the effects of power in particular places and initiates a discussion about how to access and tease out what constitutes the intimate both ethically and politically throughout the research process.

    This collection provides valuable reflections about intimacy in the research process - from encounters in the field, through data analysis, to the various pieces of written work. A global and heterogeneous pool of scholars and researchers introduce personal ways of writing intimacy into feminist geography. ​ As authors expand existing conceptualizations of intimacy and include their own stories, chapters explore the methodological challenges of using intimacy in research as an approach, a topic and a site of interaction. 

    The book is valuable reading for students and researchers of Geography, as well as anyone interested in the ethics and practicalities of feminist, critical and emotional research methodologies.

    Introduction

    1. Muddling Intimacy Methodologically

    Courtney Donovan and Pamela Moss

    Section 1: Methodological Challenges

    2. An Uncomfortable Position: Making Sense of Field Encounters through Intimate Reflections

    Maral Sotoudehnia

    3. ‘I’m here, I hate it and I can’t cope anymore’: Writing about Suicide

    Gail Adams-Hutcheson and Robyn Longhurst

    4. In the Skin: Intimate Acts in Economic Globalization

    Maureen Sioh

    5. Navigating Intimate Insider Status: Bridging Audiences through Writing and Presenting

    Vanessa A. Massaro and Dana Cuomo

    Section 2: Emergent Effects of Including One’s own Story

    6. Intimate Creativity: Using Creative Practice to Express Intimate Worlds

    Clare Madge

    7. Writing/drawing Experiences of Silence and Intimacy in Fieldwork Relationships

    Kacy McKinney

    8. Open for Business? First Forays into Collaborative Autobiographical Writing in Extractive British Columbia

    Zoë A. Meletis and Blake Hawkins

    9. Walking the Line between Professional and Personal: Using Autobiography in Invisible Disability Research

    Toni Alexander

    10. Are we Sitting Comfortably? Doing-writing to Embody Thinking-with

    Kye Askins

    Section 3: Multiple Aspects of Researching Intimacy

    11. Accelerating Intimacy? Digital Health and Humanistic Discourse

    Courtney Donovan

    12. To Hold and be Held: Engaging with Suffering at End of Life through a Consideration of Personal Writing

    Kelsey Hanrahan

    13. Inhabiting Research, Accessing Intimacy, Becoming Collective

    Karen Falconer Al-Hindi, Pamela Moss, Leslie Kern and Roberta Hawkins

    14. Intimacy, Animal Emotion and Empathy: Multispecies Intimacy as Slow Research Practice

    Kathryn Gillespie

    Section 4: Analytical Methods as Part of Writing

    15. Bearing Witness to Geographies of Life and Death: Intimate Writing and Violent Geographies

    Samuel Henkin

    16. Becoming Fieldnotes

    Ebru Ustandag

    17. Hiding in the Garden: Autoethnography and Intimate Spaces

    Kathryn Besio

    18. Death, Dying and Decision-making in an Intensive Care Unit: Tracing Micro-connections through Auto-methods

    Pamela Moss

    19. Places of the Open Season

    Sarah de Leeuw

    Concluding Remarks

    20. Intimate Research Acts

    Pamela Moss and Courtney Donovan

    Biography

    Pamela Moss is a Professor in Human and Social Development, University of Victoria, Canada.

    Courtney Donovan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment, San Francisco State University, USA.