Insider-outsider as process: drawing as reflexive feminist methodology during fieldwork

This paper illustrates the potential of drawing as a creative method to document and analyse the shifting insider-outsider status of the researcher during fieldwork. I draw on my experiences conducting field-based research at night around outsourced call centres in Mumbai, India, where I examined how women made decisions regarding night-time urban mobility and household social reproduction. While conducting research, I analysed my fluctuating position as an insider or outsider, and how these shifts impacted research dynamics. Further, I relied on boundary-making to alter my relative distance from research participants, thus shaping my positioning on the insider-outsider spectrum. I used hand drawing as a representational technique to document the site, as well as to analyse my positionality within it. This article places feminist methodological insights in conversation with geographic scholarship on drawing to make the following contributions. I show how drawing as a technique can enrich feminist claims about the complex relations between researcher and research participants, challenging a static and dichotomous framing of the researcher as insider or outsider. I also contend that feminist concerns about power dynamics can shape the use of drawing as a critical methodological tool.

Aparna Parikh, Insider-outsider as process: drawing as reflexive feminist methodology during fieldwork, Cultural geographies (27, 3) pp. . Copyright © 2019. DOI: 10.1177/1474474019887755. Users who receive access to an article through a repository are reminded that the article is protected by copyright and reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses. Users may also download and save a local copy of an article accessed in an institutional repository for the user's personal reference. For permission to reuse an article, please follow our Process for Requesting Permission.

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Work Title Insider-outsider as process: drawing as reflexive feminist methodology during fieldwork
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Open Access
Creators
  1. Aparna Parikh
License In Copyright (Rights Reserved)
Work Type Article
Publisher
  1. cultural geographies
Publication Date November 25, 2019
Publisher Identifier (DOI)
  1. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474019887755
Deposited January 22, 2024

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