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Journal ArticleDOI

Making Space for Failure in Geographic Research

03 Apr 2018-The Professional Geographer (Routledge)-Vol. 70, Iss: 2, pp 230-238
TL;DR: This article argued that failure should be recognized as a central component of what it means to do qualitative geographical field research and that there is much value to be found in failure if it is critically examined and shared, and if there is a supportive space in which to exchange our experiences of failing in the field.
Abstract: The idea that field research is an inherently “messy” process has become widely accepted by geographers in recent years. There has thus far been little acknowledgment, however, of the role that failure plays in doing human geography. In this article we push back against this, arguing that failure should be recognized as a central component of what it means to do qualitative geographical field research. This article seeks to use failure proactively and provocatively as a powerful resource to improve research practice and outcomes, reconsidering and giving voice to it as everyday, productive, and necessary to our continual development as researchers and academics. This article argues that there is much value to be found in failure if it is critically examined and shared, and—crucially—if there is a supportive space in which to exchange our experiences of failing in the field.

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Citations
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Journal Article
TL;DR: The Queer Art of Failure as discussed by the authors is a collection of animated and stop-motion movies of the past decade, designed, made and marketed for mass audiences, mainly comprising children.
Abstract: Judith ‘Jack’ Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure sets itself the task of ‘dismantl[ing] the logics of success and failure with which we currently live’ (2011: 2). To do so it constructs what Halberstam calls a ‘silly archive’, which ranges from the animated cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants to Yoko Ono and Marina Abramović’s performance art to Elfride Jelinek’s The Piano Teacher. Failure, for Halberstam, is not to be avoided, as it offers insights, ways of being, forms of politics and paradigms of resistance to current hegemonies. Working within the realm of queer theory and cultural studies, the book strangely echoes the 1970s sentiments of punk refusal as well as the global gay liberationists’ call for the invention of revolutionary sexualities outside of familial relations. Its dismantling of failure aims to show how winning is currently predicated upon losers. The inequitable neo-liberal ideologies that constitute today’s winners and losers relies on a basic assumption: those who lose did not work hard enough and thus deserve their fate. Halberstam asks us to consider the justice in winning in a global economy whose winners – the 1 per cent – do take all, leave very little for the rest of us, and next to nothing for those at the bottom end of the economic hierarchy. With ‘low theory’, an approach adapted from Stuart Hall’s reading of Antonio Gramsci, Halberstam brings together an eccentric array of sources. Low theory, for Halberstam, aims broadly and looks to arrive at counter-hegemonic options that are widely accessible. He defines low theory as less beholden to a particular telos and, again citing Hall, sees it ‘not as an end onto itself but “a detour en route to something else”’ (Halberstam 2011: 15). In a book about failure, it follows that Halberstam envisions low theory as a means to eschew goal-oriented politics and social theories. It is ‘open’ to ‘unpredictable outcomes’ and is ‘adaptable, shifting, and flexible’ (2011: 16). Halberstam predicates his low theory on what Hall describes as Gramsci’s ‘open’ Marxism. According to Hall, Gramsci’s theories were derived from the application of Marxist ideas to the real political problems that he faced in life, not from a deterministic application of theory in service of a teleological political project. Halberstam inserts himself into this logic by envisioning an ‘open pedagogy’ that is similarly amenable to questioning, that is bottom-up in its perspective and that ‘detaches itself from prescriptive methods, fixed logics, and epistemes’; instead, it ‘orients us toward problem-solving knowledge or social visions of radical justice’ (2011: 16–17). A large part of Halberstam’s silly archive is animated and stopmotion movies of the past decade, designed, made and marketed for mass audiences, mainly comprising children. Halberstam calls these movies ‘Pixarvolt’, finding in the works of Pixar and DreamWorks recipes for collective rebellion against capitalist economies and power and, in short, a ‘revolt’ against the status quos of neo-liberal humanism. These films, Halberstam argues, are made for children, who he sees as kinds of failed subjects, people for whom the world is not designed, who are clumsy and frustrated with various forms of authority, who are ready and willing to view the world in new ways, and for whom a revolution is a promising option. In these films, Halberstam sees ‘a rich technological field for rethinking collectivities, transformation, identification, animality, and posthumanity’ (2011: 174). He notes that Pixarvolt’s plots usually revolve around a struggle between human and non-human creatures in relationships that ‘resemble what used to be called “class struggle,” and they offer numerous scenarios of revolt and alternatives to grim, mechanical, industrial cycles of production and consumption’ (Halberstam 2011: 29). Pixarvolt films also focus on escapes from captivity that culminate in utopian dreams of freedom, elements in which he finds neither childishness nor a trajectory towards adult freedom but the dreams and means of social transformation. Key to Halberstam’s analysis is the counter-intuitive connections he argues the films create between communitarian revolt and queer forms of embodiment. Pixarvolt films, Halberstam argues, can provide new modes of thinking and new models of family, parenting and sociality. ‘While many Marxist scholars have characterized and dismissed queer politics as “body politics,”’ Halberstam argues, ‘these films recognize that alternative forms of embodiment and desire are central to the struggle against corporate domination’ (2011: 29). Halberstam concedes that there are no guarantees that animated

723 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
10 Apr 2019
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the gradual brutalities that communities surrounded by petrochemical infrastructure endure over time, and explore the role of environmental degradation in economic and social degradation.
Abstract: Toxic pollution is a form of violence. This article explores the gradual brutalities that communities surrounded by petrochemical infrastructure endure over time. Contributing to political geograph...

134 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors advocate for greater operationalizing of anti-racism pedagogies within the field of geography, arguing that the current theoretical and political changes in the study of geography need to be addressed.
Abstract: Responding to rising social tensions and ongoing theoretical and political changes in the study of geography, we advocate for greater operationalizing of anti-racism pedagogies within the field. Su...

29 citations

Dissertation
01 Jan 2018

27 citations


Cites background from "Making Space for Failure in Geograp..."

  • ...I attempt to avoid the ‘temptation to sanitise the realities of fieldwork […as this adds] one more filter between what happened ‘on the ground’ and what finds its way onto the page’ (Harrowell et al. 2017:1-2, see also Katz, 1994, Punch 2012)....

    [...]

  • ...As Harrowell et al. (2017) argue, writing about moments of mess, doubt, embarrassment and failure as honestly as possible is one way to challenge ‘the logic of intense competition and individualism engrained in the contemporary neoliberal university [which] strongly discourages this kind of…...

    [...]

  • ...…writing about moments of mess, doubt, embarrassment and failure as honestly as possible is one way to challenge ‘the logic of intense competition and individualism engrained in the contemporary neoliberal university [which] strongly discourages this kind of candour’ (Harrowell et al., 2017:7)....

    [...]

  • ...Like Harrowell et al. (2017), however, in this chapter I go beyond simply highlighting the mess or ‘everydayness’ of fieldwork (Horton, 2008:363)....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors consider the potentials and limitations of podcasts as a geographic research method by reflecting upon their own podcast project that focused on a graduate student unionization mov...
Abstract: In this article, we consider the potentials and limitations of podcasts as a geographic research method by reflecting upon our own podcast project that focused on a graduate student unionization mov...

22 citations


Cites methods from "Making Space for Failure in Geograp..."

  • ...By providing a candid account of our failures in the process of producing the podcast, we respond to calls within geography to analyze and share accounts of failure as a constitutive and critical aspect of field work and political activism (Harrowell, Davies, and Disney 2017)....

    [...]

References
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Book
01 Jan 1983
TL;DR: Features include the selection and sampling of cases, the problems of access, observation and interviewing, recording and filing data, and the process of data analysis.
Abstract: Acknowledgements Preface 1. What is ethnography? 2. Research design: problems, cases, and samples 3. Access 4. Field relations 5. Insider Accounts: listening and asking questions 6. Documents 7. Recording and organizing data 8. The process of Analysis 9. Writing Ethnography 10. Ethics References Index

9,547 citations


"Making Space for Failure in Geograp..." refers background in this paper

  • ...Ethnographers have noted that “a fear of ever making mistakes” can limit the work of researchers (Hammersely and Atkinson 2007, 92)....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors address the discussion, particularly prominent among feminist geographers, of reflexivity as a strategy for marking geographical knowledges as situated and argue that, if the aim of...
Abstract: This article addresses the discussion, particularly prominent among feminist geographers, of reflexivity as a strategy for marking geographical knowledges as situated. It argues that, if the aim of...

2,100 citations


"Making Space for Failure in Geograp..." refers background in this paper

  • ...In this article we seek to pull back from this temptation, arguing that camouflaging failure is unhelpful, particularly when we as researchers strive to meet calls for greater reflexivity and honesty in research (Rose 1997; Burawoy 2013)....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss therapists' reactions to clients' traumatic material and suggest ways that therapists can transform and integrate these traumatic material in order to provide the best services to clients, as well as to protect themselves against serious harmful effects.
Abstract: Within the context of their new constructivist self-development theory, the authors discuss therapists' reactions to clients' traumatic material. The phenomenon they term “vicarious traumatization” can be understood as related both to the graphic and painful material trauma clients often present and to the therapist's unique cognitive schemas or beliefs, expectations, and assumptions about self and others. The authors suggest ways that therapists can transform and integrate clients' traumatic material in order to provide the best services to clients, as well as to protect themselves against serious harmful effects.

1,872 citations


"Making Space for Failure in Geograp..." refers background in this paper

  • ...The importance of the researcher’s own emotions during qualitative research is well recognized (McCann and Pearlman 1990; Kleinman 1993; Young and Lee 1996; Scott et al. 2012; Calgaro 2015)....

    [...]

Book
01 Jan 1996
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show the vulnerable observer anthropology that breaks your heart as a friend in spending the time reading a book, which is also kind of better solution when you have no enough money or time to get your own adventure.
Abstract: Reading a book is also kind of better solution when you have no enough money or time to get your own adventure. This is one of the reasons we show the vulnerable observer anthropology that breaks your heart as your friend in spending the time. For more representative collections, this book not only offers it's strategically book resource. It can be a good friend, really good friend with much knowledge.

1,374 citations


"Making Space for Failure in Geograp..." refers background in this paper

  • ...Finally, we encourage geographers to “write vulnerably” (Behar 2014, 16) in their reflexive academic work, to normalize the productive place of failure within our neoliberal institutions....

    [...]

Book
19 Sep 2011
TL;DR: In this article, low theory is used to describe the art of failure in animation: animating failure: ending, fleeing, escaping, surviving, and surviving. But it does not describe how to escape from failure.
Abstract: Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xii Introduction: Low Theory 1 1. Animating Revolt and Revolting Animation 27 2. Dude, Where's My Phallus? Forgetting, Losing, Looping 53 3. The Queer Art of Failure 87 4. Shadow Feminisms: Queer Negativity and Radical Passivity 123 5. "The Killer in Me Is the Killer in You": Homosexuality and Fascism 147 6. Animating Failure: Ending, Fleeing, Surviving 173 Notes 189 Bibliography 193 Index 201

1,090 citations