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Mediating messiness: expanding ideas offlexibility, reflexivity, and embodimentin fieldworkEmily Billo a & Nancy Hiemstra aa Department of Geography , Syracuse University , 144 Eggers Hall,Syracuse , NY , 13244 , USAPublished online: 30 Apr 2012.

To cite this article: Emily Billo & Nancy Hiemstra (2013) Mediating messiness: expanding ideas offlexibility, reflexivity, and embodiment in fieldwork, Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of FeministGeography, 20:3, 313-328, DOI: 10.1080/0966369X.2012.674929

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Mediating messiness: expanding ideas of flexibility, reflexivity,and embodiment in fieldwork

Emily Billo* and Nancy Hiemstra1

Department of Geography, Syracuse University, 144 Eggers Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244, USA

(Received 19 December 2010; final version received 30 October 2011)

This article aims to help researchers think about some big-picture challenges that occurin the early stages of fieldwork. In particular, we address the transition from a clear,concise research proposal to the often complicated, messy initiation of a project.Drawing on autobiographical accounts of our own PhD research projects, we focus ondilemmas that may arise for researchers guided by feminist epistemology andmethodology. First, we discuss parameters regarding acceptable changes to originalresearch plans and questions. Noting that the carefully planned proposal maydramatically change as fieldwork begins, we draw on feminist literatures to expand andconcretize the notion of flexibility in the research process. Second, we puzzle out therelationship between theory, epistemology, and method as the researcher delves intoher fieldwork. As logistical challenges may take priority, theoretical andepistemological concerns may temporarily wane. Third, we consider the many waysin which the researcher’s personal and field life bleed into each other to shape theconduct of research. We emphasize the importance of considering – prior to researchas well as during – what the concepts of reflexivity and embodiment mean in fieldwork,especially for the researcher in terms of personal needs and logistical realities. Finally,while we suggest that there are certain unique pressures that shape the early stages ofthe field research period for PhD students, we conclude the article by focusing on waysin which lessons learned during our own experiences might be broadly useful for anyresearchers in the beginning stages of fieldwork.

Keywords: fieldwork; methodology; flexibility; reflexivity; embodiment; Ecuador

Introduction

The way research is written up in academic journals often represents it as a linear, pristine,ordered process. Yet, in practice, most projects are actually more messy, frustrating, andcomplex (Valentine 2001, 43).

This study arises out of frustration with what we experienced as a conceptual and practical

gap between our confident, clear research proposals, and our actual conduct of fieldwork.

As PhD students, both of us had moved through the research design process in a fairly

typical manner. We labored over proposals, did the required scrambling to get sufficient

funding, and arrived in the field nervous yet excited to begin. We were aware that research

often does not go as planned (Chacko 2004; Hays-Mitchell 2001; Mandel 2003; Murray

and Overton 2003; Parker 2001; Price 2001; Valentine 2001), and that even the best

preparations for the field cannot predict and plan for every situation, every twist and turn

of research (Mandel 2003). We had read the wise counsel that, ‘Regrouping, reflecting,

q 2013 Taylor & Francis

*Corresponding author. Email: erbillo@maxwell.syr.edu

Gender, Place and Culture, 2013

Vol. 20, No. 3, 313–328, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2012.674929

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accepting mistakes, and modifying plans are four cornerstones of fieldwork’ (Hays-

Mitchell 2001, 317). In summary, we knew we should be prepared to be flexible.

Once in the field, however, we found that we had not really thought sufficiently about

possible disjunctures between our expectations and reality (Mandel 2003). Consequently,

transitioning from our neat plans to the actual research process felt like stepping into an

unknown abyss, and we struggled with what flexibility can and should look like in

practice. Some of our decisions surrounding shifting research design and implementation

occurred relatively easily, simply because there were no other apparent ways forward.

Other decisions, however, were more difficult to think through, such as assessing the

acceptable limits of possible changes.

Therefore, what we seek to do here is help PhD researchers think about some big-

picture challenges and dilemmas that may arise before they enter the field, and also to

provide some guidance to researchers actually confronting such difficulties in the field. We

choose to focus on PhD research because for us it represented unique pressures and

struggles. Research for a masters degree is often carried out during several weeks or

months, avoiding some of the questions raised during a longer research period.

Meanwhile, research conducted at the postdoctoral stage can be carried out over a period

of several years, and thus eliminates the finite, condensed, more intense timing of PhD

research. A PhD project can also be the first sustained research project conducted

individually, and not as part of a team of researchers. Similarly, both masters and

postdoctoral research lack the same immediate, career-oriented pressure that PhD research

entails. Conducting PhD field research is usually a continuous period of several months to

a year or more, and represents research that will often inform early careers in academia. In

short, we felt significant pressure to succeed, so that the successful project would lay the

foundation for our academic identities. Thus, the challenges that emerged for us prompted

much larger doubts and concerns than they perhaps would for researchers at other stages in

their careers.

To be sure, every research project is unique, and every researcher does have to figure

things out for herself, according to the particular situation and following her own instincts.

Our objective is not to guide the reader step-by-step through the nitty-gritty details of

planning and implementing a research project; there are already valuable resources

available to support that critical process (see, for example, Creswell 2003; Hay 2000;

Leslie and Storey 2003a, 2003b; Limb and Dwyer 2001; Moss 2002; Nast 1994;

Scheyvens and Nowak 2003; Scheyvens and Storey 2003; Sharp 2005; Valentine 2001).

Instead, we aim to help researchers sort through the messiness of beginning fieldwork

(Hyndman 2001; Valentine 2001), particularly between the planning and implementation

stages of a project. While we began our fieldwork with the idea that our proposals would

act as constant guides, once in the field we realized that the transition from proposal

writing to fieldwork must be a more fluid, flexible process than what we had imagined.

We also use this moment in the research process as a point of departure to focus on

dilemmas that may arise for researchers guided by feminist epistemology and

methodology. In our projects, this included struggles with how to reconcile feminist

epistemology and theory with methods and realities encountered in the field. We

emphasize the importance of considering – prior to research as well as during – what the

concepts of reflexivity and embodimentmean in fieldwork, particularly to the researcher in

terms of personal needs and logistical realities. We explore how these concepts are

influenced by the materiality of the field, a constantly shifting landscape that appears static

only in the proposal.

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One note before continuing: while both of us conducted research in places

geographically distinct from our home university, we do not mean to imply that the ‘field’

is necessarily contained in space or time (Katz 1994, 67), or exists as a place with clear

boundaries that separate it from the researcher’s ‘real’ or ‘academic’ life (Cupples and

Kindon 2003; Hyndman 2001; Katz 1994; Nast 1994; Sparke 1996).2 Indeed, we hope the

discussion will be broadly useful to researchers working on a range of projects, in places

close to home as well as far away, and employing a variety of methods and

epistemologies.3

This article is organized as follows. We provide brief summaries of each of our

projects and objectives as laid out in our research proposals. We then draw on

autobiographical accounts illustrating how our fieldwork experiences deviated from our

original plans. In the first section, we discuss thought processes and decisions that may

accompany the evolution of fieldwork. For us, this included significant decisions about

what constituted acceptable changes to our original research plans and questions while in

the field. Second, we puzzle through the relationship between theory, epistemology, and

method during fieldwork. Third, we consider the many ways in which the researcher’s

personal and field life bleed into each other to shape the conduct of research.

Research as proposed: clear and confident

Both of us conducted research in Ecuador, roughly at the same time, using principally

qualitative methods. Beyond these similarities, however, our projects were significantly

different. Emily’s research, grounded in political ecology, was based in a rural,

Amazonian indigenous community, while Nancy’s was rooted in political geography and

took place primarily in the Andean city of Cuenca. The challenges each of us faced were

shaped in part by the environments in which we were working. In the following

paragraphs, we briefly summarize our research as initially designed.

Emily’s project aimed to examine the corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs

of a multinational oil company, Repsol-YPF, operating in an indigenous community in

Ecuador’s Amazon region. CSR programs have developed in recent years as the business

response to social and environmental criticism of corporate operations, and in Ecuador

include electricity, transportation, and micro-credit projects. CSR programs are

implemented to mitigate many of the social and environmental impacts of oil extraction

in indigenous communities, yet they often create additional problems. Considered in light

of the historic lack of state presence in Ecuador’s Amazon region, CSR programs raise

important questions about state accountability as well as corporate roles in shaping

indigenous, local livelihoods (Sawyer 2004). Emily saw CSR programs as a window

through which to view the changing roles of, and relationships between, the Ecuadorian

state, transnational oil firms, and indigenous populations in the context of resource

extraction and rural development. During 12 months in Ecuador, she planned to undertake

a multi-scalar, institutional ethnography (Smith 1987) of CSR, using multiple qualitative

methods: interviews, surveys, participant observation, and focus groups. She would spend

approximately 60% of her time in Ecuador’s northern Amazon region, in the Kichwa

community of Pompeya. The remaining 40% would be split between Coca (the capital of

Orellana Province, where Pompeya is located) and Quito, the country’s capital.

Nancy planned to study the role and impact of human smuggling in daily life in

Ecuador. Intense political and economic turmoil in the late 1990s in Ecuador spurred

unprecedented emigration to the USA (Acosta et al. 2004; Jokisch and Kyle 2006). While

not all Ecuadorian migration to the USA is illicit, expansion of transnational human

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smuggling networks between Ecuador and the USA has been central to the increase in

migration (Kyle and Liang 2001; Thompson and Ochoa 2004). While most public

discourses and policies in the USA regard human smuggling as an unlawful industry that

must be halted, interviews with local residents during preliminary research suggested that

to the average Ecuadorian in this region, the smuggler can be a neighbor, a friend, and

even a local hero. The overarching objective of Nancy’s proposed research was to address

these disjunctures between policy and lived reality by studying the role of human

smuggling in everyday life in Cuenca. She intended to employ a range of mainly

qualitative, ethnographic methods to get at these various aspects of human smuggling

during nine months in Ecuador. She would spend the first two months in Quito,

interviewing US and Ecuadorian government officials and employees of organizations

working with migration issues. During the following seven months Nancy would

volunteer at a non-profit organization in Cuenca, and select three small cities in which to

conduct household surveys and interviews.

Our carefully laid research designs were almost immediately challenged as we began

our fieldwork, and both of our projects changed significantly while we were in the field.

While the objectives of Emily’s project remained generally true to her original proposal,

she significantly modified the sites of research, her day-to-day activities, and the methods

that she employed. While perhaps considered ‘expected’ changes to the proposal, these

shifts significantly altered the scope of inquiry and the project’s possible outcomes.

Meanwhile, Nancy’s project changed more profoundly, including abandoning her original

research topic and questions. We begin each of the following sections with accounts of our

personal experiences, in order to empirically situate the subsequent discussions. In the

next section, we open a discussion aimed at expanding and concretizing the meaning of

flexibility in fieldwork.

Negotiating fundamental changes to the proposal

Upon her arrival in Ecuador, Emily decided to go directly to the Amazon region and begin

her work in Pompeya, knowing it would be a long process of trust building and logistical

concerns related to research start-up. She initially found it difficult to develop a rapport

with locals, but through house-to-house interviews, people seemed to gradually accept her

presence, though most residents were never very welcoming or open. She also began to

seek out Repsol-YPF’s community relations officers, those who implement CSR projects

in the field, to try and interview them. After several months Emily began to feel like she

was exhausting possibilities in Pompeya; the difficulty of formulating a consistent daily

plan eventually became frustrating, and her work was not advancing any more quickly the

more time she spent in the community. She realized she was dragging her feet at the

beginning of every day, and was not enjoying the research process. She began to push

harder for interviews in government offices in Quito. She also began to broaden her

inquiries regarding CSR beyond Pompeya and Repsol-YPF. Finally, she began to spend

more time in the regional capital of Coca, conducting semi-structured interviews with

actors more closely tied to a movement opposing corporate influence. While not always

sure which direction these new contacts would take her research, she slowly began to

accept that the daily unknown was part of her research conduct.

In Cuenca, Nancy began a pre-arranged volunteer position at an organization4 which at

the time of her preliminary research trip 16 months earlier had frequently worked on issues

related to human smuggling. She soon realized, however, that the organization’s activities

had changed, and it now rarely dealt with smuggling cases. She also found that

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Ecuadorians were understandably wary of someone from the USA asking about

smuggling. Nancy’s sense of desperation mounted as the first months passed and she felt

her activities were not contributing to meeting her original research objectives. Therefore,

after 2 months she began to volunteer at a second organization, the Casa del Migrante,

assisting family members of migrants and returned migrants. Most family members

wanted help finding Ecuadorians detained in the USA, and she became increasingly

interested in the ways in which US detention and deportation policies impacted daily life

in Cuenca. Consequently, as the plan in her proposal felt progressively more unachievable,

an alternative way forward materialized. Nancy, however, found the potential of making a

major shift in topic disorienting; she was uncertain whether it was acceptable to

completely change topics, and her confidence was shaken without the solidity of a

meticulously developed plan. Eventually, however – and after numerous conversations

with key supporters, including academic advisors and colleagues – it felt like the reasons

to commit to the major shift were overwhelming: a near dead-end with her original

research questions, growing passion about a different topic, and a personal desire to meet

local needs and interests.

As the above anecdotes suggest, both of us immediately faced questions of how and

when to change our research design. As Valentine (2001, 43) cautions, ‘ . . . unanticipated

themes can emerge during the course of fieldwork that redefine the relevance of different

research questions. Likewise, access or other practical problems can prevent some

research aims being fulfilled and lead to a shift in the focus of the work.’ Again, while we

were aware such changes would arise, we had to learn to negotiate these changes. Having

agonized over research design, we found embracing the slipperiness of actual research

difficult. We were troubled by questions such as: When is it okay to change the research

plan, and to what extent? How do you know when you are not just giving up, or not trying

hard enough? What does a researcher do when her original research questions no longer

seem valid, relevant, or answerable? While there are, of course, no easy, pre-packaged

answers to these questions, we offer two guiding points.

First, you must approach flexibility as a necessary tool – not as a concession or a

failure – and as a tool that can be used to the researcher’s advantage. For us, finding the

necessary flexibility meant learning to think about the proposal as an adjustable, evolving

template in the field, instead of a finished document. In other words, the relationship

between proposal and project should be dynamic and fluid. The research design process

typically takes place within a culture of revision, evolution, and feedback; this culture

needs to be carried into the field. That is, the proposal should give you the direction,

confidence, guidance, (and funding!) necessary to arrive in the field; it should not,

however, tie you to a plan that does not fit the reality you encounter. Yet, ‘fluidity and

openness in the research process is not always easy to enact or maintain, especially when

inserted into multiple scales of power relations and institutional affiliations, time/budget

constraints, and distances (physical, emotional, philosophical, political)’ (Sultana 2007,

380). We emphasize that these constraints may be more daunting to PhD students, who are

only just beginning a project. Time is of the essence, and the feeling that it is rapidly

slipping away can add to a mounting feeling of panic. Moreover, we found that the power

dynamics linked to graduate school relationships follow the PhD student into the field, and

present a constant challenge to prove oneself. These relationships can influence how the

research process unfolds, the interest of research respondents in the project, and the

nagging feeling that the research must produce enough material for a dissertation.

Dynamism and fluidity will mean different things to different researchers. The challenge is

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to embrace a notion of flexibility that allows you to approach fieldwork constantly ready

and willing to assess, adjust, and be creative.

Second, it is of utmost importance to have a support network as one establishes what

flexibility can and should look like for your project, especially as lone PhD researchers.

There is a tendency in geography to see fieldwork as a ‘rite of passage’ (Driver 2000;

Frohlick 2002; Sundberg 2003). This view can preclude the development of key personal

support frameworks for the researcher. For both of us, email and phone conversations with

each other, with our advisors, and with people we met in the field, as well as keeping field

journals, were extremely important for working through our fieldwork doubts and

dilemmas. These networks were critical for helping us give ourselves permission to be

flexible. For example, we were able to have cell phone conversations with each other when

Emily entered Pompeya for the first time, and as Nancy was beginning to contemplate

changing her research questions. Our advisors, Alison Mountz and Tom Perreault offered

invaluable input and support via emails and Skype. As Cerwonka and Malkki (2007)

found, simply having another person to whom one can verbalize problems, thoughts, and

feelings can be crucial. Our conversations with others not only lent emotional support, but

were also critical in helping us work through the logistical problems we faced as

researchers, as well as epistemological and methodological dilemmas. We turn now to

some of these dilemmas, beginning with an analysis of the researcher’s own embodiment

in the field, a concept which helped us understand the limits of our own flexibility.

Epistemology, theory, and method in fieldwork

Emily’s research proposal included plans to hold focus groups and workshops with

Pompeyan residents, complete house-to-house surveys, and do in-depth interviews.

Eventually, however, she realized that some of these methods would have to be discarded.

Pompeyans appeared apathetic to her project, and Emily found it difficult to find willing

interviewees or focus group participants. As she better understood community dynamics

and needs, she also decided that neither surveys nor workshops were realistic. Instead,

participant observation became a key research method, as she learned the most from

observing and participating in daily activities. In addition, as she became engrossed in the

daily logistical challenges of conducting research, all the theoretical concerns she had

outlined in her proposal seemed to fade away, and in fact to matter little. She struggled to

understand where theory might fit, and if she could ‘do’ both fieldwork and theory when so

much of her day was consumed with practical details, and figuring out information she still

needed.

In her original (and now largely discarded) research plan, Nancy had intended to try to

get at ‘the everyday’ by going into participants’ homes to do both surveys and in-depth

interviews. Now, instead, most of her research activities were limited to the Casa del

Migrante, the second organization where she began volunteering, rather than going into

homes or otherwise interacting with migrants’ families outside of the Casa. But after

changing topics she was busy gathering data, becoming more passionate and energized.

However, a doubt began to lurk in her mind: were the methods she was using in line with

the theories supposedly driving her project? This question boiled down to: Are my methods

truly feminist methods? She kept thinking of Cope’s (2002) argument that being a feminist

matters in all parts of the research process, and Moss’ (2002, 3) statement that ‘Doing

feminist research means actually undertaking the task of collecting and analyzing

information while engaging a feminist politics.’ She was also worried about the semi-

structured format she was using for the interviews of deportees: Did they not let the

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interviewees speak for themselves enough? Did they miss emotion and personal

experiences? It felt like the research that she could do – and was, in fact, barreling ahead

with – was not necessarily feminist. This worry persisted, but she did not feel like she had

the time to address these doubts. Her project finally had momentum, and her remaining

time in Ecuador was flying by too fast as it was.

While aware that theoretical and epistemological positions are crucial elements of a

successful proposal (see Cope 2002; Raghuram and Madge 2006; Valentine 2001, 2002),

we felt unsure of the roles that theory and epistemology should play in the field. Both of us

approached our research guided by feminist epistemology (England 1994; Katz 1994;

Kobayashi 1994; McDowell 1992; Nast 1994),5 and aimed to use qualitative, ethnographic

methods to explore the ‘ambivalence’ and ‘contradictoriness’ of spaces, and to resist the

reproduction of ‘inegalitarian’ spaces at multiple scales (Bondi 2004, 9). We chose to

focus on the everyday as a space that is only partially knowable, and which is constructed

through various subjectivities, and known to different subjects (Rose 1993). At certain

points, however, we seemed to default to more masculinist research methods, including

separating ourselves from our emotions, as we felt driven to get data, and to soldier on (see

Rose 1993). At times, what we believed to be a feminist approach became physically

exhausting. What is more, because we had chosen methods with particular epistemological

goals in mind (Sharp 2005, 50), we found considering changes to our planned

methodology disconcerting.6 We struggled to answer questions such as, How does

fieldwork ground theory in a specific location (Nast 1994; Raghuram and Madge 2006)?

How should epistemology shape methods? What role does theory play during the actual

research process?

Here, we draw inspiration in particular from feminist geographers who have

productively grappled with this relationship in the past (Moss 2002; Nagar 2002;

Valentine 2002). Raghuram and Madge (2006, 2008) view theory as an oscillation

between local level experiences and broader generalizations. In other words, theory

requires a process of abstraction, which is ‘always a social, cultural, political, and

emotional process’ (Raghuram and Madge 2008, 223). The work of conducting research is

gathering empirical data, but these data are not value free, or ‘theory-free’. Instead, as

researchers, the process by which we gather data is built upon theoretical understandings

of our worlds, or our own process of theorizing. Undoing the divide between empirics and

theory is one way to begin to approach theorization; the practical informs the theory – it is

not one or the other (Raghuram and Madge 2008). As Nagar (2002, 184) suggests, these

gaps between theory and practice might also hinge on the ways in which feminists attempt

‘to talk across worlds’ and how we attempt to connect theory to those communities in

which we conduct fieldwork. Our theoretical frames are often embedded in our own

training in academic institutions and the move from the proposal, written in an academic

setting, to the field, disrupts this training.

Despite being aware of this relationship between theory, method, and empirics, we

were still troubled by the move from our home university into the field. During fieldwork,

theory seemed to take on a much different relationship to our work than it had while

writing the proposal. The ensuing doubts, we contend, can be addressed by extending the

concepts of fluidity and dynamism to the relationship between theory, epistemology, and

method. First, we eventually realized that the realities of an unfolding research project

may involve adapting or dropping planned methods. It is helpful, we found, to think about

the methods laid out in our proposals as composing a toolbox of options. While it is

important to begin fieldwork with a variety of possible methods, you most likely will not

and cannot use them all. In the field as in the proposal writing stage, you choose your

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methods within the bounds of your guiding epistemology. In the field, however, you have

to be able to adjust according to the actual scenario you encounter, not that which you

planned on encountering in the fictitious (and idealized) pre-proposal scenario. For

example, as Nancy found, returning after preliminary fieldwork one cannot expect to find

the same conjunctures upon which the proposal may be based. Indeed, the field is not

static. Instead, there are numerous material components – such as people, logistical

arrangements, and organizations – which constitute the field and make it the site of

dynamic, constant negotiation with multiple actors and factors. The exact constellations

that will be formed by these negotiations and the role played by theory will emerge only

during the course of research and in the process of analysis afterward. In addition, then,

when we leave the field it is important to remember that the research conducted focused on

a particular moment in time and that the field does not remain the same after we leave it.

Second, we had to accept that in fieldwork, theory may at times come to the fore and at

other times recede. One’s fieldwork period will inevitably inform the project’s shifting

epistemologies, as the researcher’s own presence in the field is a ‘political act’ treading the

‘social terrain’ of the field (Cope 2002; Katz 1994; Nast 1994). If we think of theory as a

more abstract process, rather than ‘archived knowledge’, we can begin to encompass its

more social, cultural, and political aspects (Raghuram and Madge 2007). For example, it

was only when Emily left the field and began to analyze her findings that theoretical

concerns seemed more prevalent once again. Because our fieldwork aims to expand the

theoretical and epistemological base we used in our proposal, it is to be expected that

theory and epistemology seem to expand and contract as practice pushes our

interpretations of them in new directions. In the following section, we address the ways

in which our own personal realities and roles as researchers intersect with and impact

research.

Reflexivity and embodiment

Emily planned to live in Pompeya for a month at a time during her tenure in Ecuador,

making it her home base, with 1- to 2-week trips to Coca and Quito when necessary.

An organization which did work in the area7 had agreed to allow her to stay at a house they

maintained in the community.8 Emily immediately faced a host of logistical and practical

challenges that led her to reevaluate this plan. One issue had to do with personal safety. Oil

workers in the area frequently made unwanted sexual advances that often felt threatening.

The house did not feel secure, and it made her nervous to be there alone or to leave

valuables unattended. Health posed another problem. The community’s running water

system was broken, making both drinking water and hygiene an issue. Also, local custom

is to offer guests chicha, a drink typically made from fermented yuca and water. It was

impossible to know if the chicha was made with potable water, and consequently there

were many days when she felt too ill to venture out. In addition, set apart by her otherness,

Emily experienced an overwhelming loneliness. Like Frohlick (2002), Emily had perhaps

romanticized the hardships of working in a rural, isolated community, and she soon

realized that staying in Pompeya for extended periods was not workable for her. She,

therefore, made two changes to her research plan. First, she rented an apartment in Quito,

which allowed her to have a home base, and she then made trips to the Amazon region

from there. Second, she made her visits to Pompeya shorter, and when there rented a room

in a small convent across the river from the center of the community.9

Nancy was accompanied in Ecuador by her partner and seven-month-old son. While

she had always intended to bring her family, she had not written this into her proposal

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because she was unsure how funding agencies would respond. Consequently, transitioning

to fieldwork involved rethinking how she would proceed. Logistically, the process of

setting up just one place for a family seemed challenging enough, and suddenly the idea of

being in Quito for two months, as designed in her original proposal, and then moving again

seemed unrealistic. Instead, Nancy and her family went directly to Cuenca, and she took

short solo trips to Quito as needed. The presence of her family also shaped the research

project itself, particularly times and places of research. She was more likely to keep

regular 9–5 work hours, rather than the more constant hours perhaps typical of a lone

researcher, and to want to spend evenings and weekends with her family. She chose not to

make trips to remote towns and villages that would have required her to get home late at

night or be gone multiple days. Nancy was also surprised by how she reacted personally to

the ‘data’ she was gathering. The stories of family separation and anguish expressed by

both detained migrants’ families and deportees were upsetting, and she often came home

at night depressed and exhausted.

There will always be things that the researcher does not (and cannot) know will

become important prior to beginning a project (Sundberg 2005). In retrospect, however,

we could have thought more realistically about some of the ways in which our personal

lives and needs intersected with the realities of our field sites, and the profound impacts

that these intersections could have on our research. Here, we draw on and expand

foundational work by feminist geographers on reflexivity and embodiment in order to

understand these impacts, as well as facilitate more holistic planning in research design.

A common theme in both of our proposals was a desire to conduct embodied research,

meaning research that endeavored to ‘[move] beyond analyses of policy and structure, to

the more fluid, daily, personal interactions . . . to locate political processes in a time and a

place’ (Mountz 2004, 325–6). Influenced by feminist literature, we aimed to pay attention

to scales of analysis often overlooked (Haraway 1991; Hyndman 2001; Mountz 2004), and

desired to focus on the everyday. Our research experiences, however, led to the realization

that our conceptualization of embodiment focused on the people and groups with whom

we planned to conduct research, and largely failed to include ourselves. In other words, we

did not adequately consider the flesh and blood, everyday needs and realities of our own

bodies in the field. While we were aware of – and eschewed – the masculinist ideal of the

hardy, solo, brave researcher willing to do whatever it takes to get the data (Cupples and

Kindon 2003; Frohlick 2002; Katz 1996; Nast 1994; Rose 1993; Sparke 1996; Sundberg

2003; Wolf 1996), we had unwittingly replaced it with another, equally unworkable ideal,

that of the researcher ready to dive into the everyday, without consideration of what that

meant to our own daily realities. To some extent, we were confronted by the difficulty of

reconciling our own shifting research identities in the mutually constitutive social

relations of the field, which included practical realities of our own daily lives: in Nancy’s

case her family’s circumstances, and for Emily the sited social implications of gender, in

addition to the logistical challenges of her rural field location. Our own subjectivity was

being reworked through the gaps and fissures of the networks and connections in the field,

which in turn were shaped by our own personal circumstances (Nagar and Ali 2003; Pratt

2000; Rose 1997).

There is growing awareness of the many ways in which the researcher’s subjectivity

influences her research, from the very first decisions made about what to research all the

way through the process of data analysis and interpretation (England 1994; Frohlick 2002;

Haraway 1991; Katz 1994; Valentine 2002). Scholars, particularly feminists, have made

important strides in disrupting the idealized image of the lone, ungendered, unbiased

researcher, going into the field like a neutral, empty vessel simply waiting to be filled with

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data (see Cerwonka and Malkki 2007; Cupples and Kindon 2003; Frohlick 2002; Katz

1994; Kobayashi 1994; Sparke 1996; Staeheli and Lawson 1994; Starrs 2001; Valentine

2002; Walton-Roberts 2010). The development of the concept of reflexivity, generally

understood as a commitment to thinking about the ways in which our personal biography

and positionality influence our research, has provided an important tool for recognizing

and assessing how one’s own subject position is inserted into certain power relations in

ways that ultimately determine the knowledge that is produced (England 1994; Kobayashi

1994; Valentine 2002; Sultana 2007).

Our individual experiences in the field, however, illustrate that ideas of reflexivity can

usefully be expanded particularly in two respects. Noting the rich literature on reflexivity

regarding individual subject positions, Frohlick (2002, 49) writes, ‘Less has been written

about how, prior to entering the field, these positions affect the nature of the field sites we

choose or how they actually play out in the field’ (Gilbert 1994; Nast 1994).10 Reflexivity,

we argue, must expand to include researchers’ personal circumstances, needs, and abilities

(see Cerwonka and Malkki 2007, 36). In other words, a researcher must be better at

reconciling any fieldwork ideal with the reality of what you can personally do and what is

sustainable for you. As Mandel (2003, 208) discovered during her fieldwork, it is

important to think ‘reflexively not only about my role in the production of knowledge, but

also about how I am feeling throughout the project.’ Keeping in mind that the field is

constructed through social relationships, combining personal, political, and professional

needs (see Hyndman 2001; Katz 1994; Nast 1994) enables a researcher to consider the

practical and personal aspects of her subjectivity that influence how research will proceed,

and indeed how the field ultimately influences a researcher’s subjectivity. Our

understanding of reflexivity, then, had to expand to incorporate our own needs, abilities,

and emotions. In addition, the researcher must keep in mind that the material

constellations encountered in the field can also influence a researcher’s positionality.11 As

Nagar (2002, 182) contends, ‘reflexivity in US academic writing has mainly focused on

examining the identities of the individual researcher rather than on the ways in which those

identities intersect with institutional, geopolitical and material aspects of their

positionality.’ Researchers, therefore, should bear in mind that neither their own subject

positions nor their relationships with the personalities and realities they encounter in the

field will necessarily remain static.

We are in no way suggesting that researchers should not endeavor to get at the

everyday, or should not aim to conduct embodied research. Instead, through our reworked,

more expansive understandings of embodiment and reflexivity, we advocate for more

careful consideration of the practical needs of everyday life for the researcher. In other

words, embodiment must mean that the researcher thinks about what embodiment looks

like for herself, and not just the community of research, in all stages of research (England

1994; Frohlick 2002; Katz 1994). It is important to remember that, ‘“the field” is not a

bounded discrete entity separate from everyday life.’ (Cupples and Kindon 2003, 212).

Our point is that the everyday realities of researchers are also important embodied aspects

of research, and ways in which the field influences the researcher personally merit

additional consideration alongside ways in which the researcher influences the field.

For example, we underestimated how exhausting fieldwork can be (Bondi 2003;

Mandel 2003; Sharp 2005), and the time required for particular methods (Hyndman 2001;

Mandel 2003; Valentine 2001). For Emily, exhaustion meant the emotional investment of

trying to stay busy, healthy, and happy, seeking out interviews and gaining the trust of

community members, while living in a difficult environment. For Nancy, both the

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everyday negotiation of the U.S. detention system by phone and the restructuring of her

project were emotionally draining.

Interestingly, logistical and methodological compromises we made meant that we

were somewhat less involved in the daily life of our research communities, and therefore

our projects were perhaps less able to get at more everyday impacts our proposals had

confidently claimed we would. For instance, in making sure she was safer and healthier,

Emily sacrificed opportunities for more interaction in the community; the convent and the

center of Pompeya are on opposite sides of a river, and the last boat crossing is at 4:30 pm,

just as many people returned from work. As a result, she missed the possibility of more

informal conversations with community members and attendance at social gatherings that

occurred when the work day ended. Decisions that Nancy made to spend more time with

her own family meant that she was largely unavailable for research precisely at the time

when most Ecuadorians were in their homes, with their own families. She, therefore, lost

potential opportunities to observe ways in which US detention policies were embodied

within actual homes and influenced relationships between multiple family members. We

failed to consider the intersections between our own identities and the emotional and

physical limitations of the material realities of conducting research in Ecuador. And in

paying attention to our own embodiment, we missed particular windows for understanding

our research subjects. It is important to consider, however, that while the new research

approaches adopted may have resulted in the omission of certain types of data, other

knowledges were created. In turn, the space of the everyday was produced in a different

way than we imagined in the proposal. For example, Emily expanded her study of CSR to

include additional actors and perspectives, including indigenous, non-governmental

organization, and state representatives at regional and national levels. For Nancy,

conducting the bulk of her research within an institution and during business hours

allowed her to observe how family members endeavored to confront the disruptions

caused by particular US policies, as well as ways in which relatives’ workday routines

were altered.

Finally, there are important pieces in the feminist geography literature that mention

how gender shapes research in terms of methodology and epistemology. Cope (2002), for

example, writes that gender profoundly impacts ways in which people interact during

research, and others have emphasized the significance of the researcher’s personal stance

throughout the research process (Cope 2002; England 1994; Limb and Dwyer 2001;

Valentine 2002). We knew this before beginning our fieldwork, but as neither of our

projects asked specific questions about gender, we did not think it would be a central

consideration in our research. However, we did not consider how gender would affect the

practicalities of conducting fieldwork. For both of us to varying degrees, gender became a

logistical issue. Working in a rural area and studying an industry dominated by men, Emily

was constantly reminded of her difference and her gender. She also felt that her gender

determined her access to interviewees and her conduct of interviews. Moreover, Emily did

not always feel safe, which contributed to difficulties finding housing and limited

interaction in the community. Nancy’s roles as a mother and partner contributed to

practical decisions that she made about the conduct of her research, such as times of the

day and places to which she traveled to interact with participants. The presence of her

family also served to intensify both her awareness and that of participants of the disparity

between the mobility opportunities for US citizens and for Ecuadorians, and perhaps

triggered a sense of empathy – and of personal guilt – that she would not have otherwise

felt (see Cupples and Kindon 2003).

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Researchers – especially women – rarely talk about these practical, personal

considerations, due to fear of seeming weak, of detracting attention from results, of not

passing the ‘test’ of fieldwork, or concerns about appearing ‘serious’ (Frohlick 2002;

Sundberg 2003). As Cerwonka and Malkki (2007, 6) note, however, ‘Work and life come

to be entangled in the embodied, situational, relational practice that constitutes

ethnographic fieldwork.’ Here, we emphasize the importance to all researchers of

considering the practical implications of gender, physical and emotional limits, and local

circumstances. Additionally, it is important to recognize that there are myriad ways in

which the material aspects of the field will intersect with these practical implications to

ultimately shape the knowledge that is created.

Conclusions

Despite knowing that our research as designed in the proposal would shift as we entered

the fieldwork portion of the research process, we were still confronted by unforeseen and

disorienting challenges. These challenges called into question our epistemological

commitments, our chosen methodologies, and our personal relationships to the field. As

we negotiated both minor and major changes to our neatly designed plans and experienced

the constant pushing and pulling that emerges through the process of collecting data, we

came to understand the importance of a more elastic notion of what it means to put theory

into practice.

In particular, we call attention to the rich literature in feminist geography that

highlights the need to be flexible, and advocate for a more fluid, dynamic

conceptualization of fieldwork. We note the underlying contradictions that can emerge

in different research projects, and call for a more holistic understanding of reflexivity and

embodiment. We both encountered physical, social, and emotional constraints –

unanticipated before our arrival in the field – which prevented the use of particular

methods and strategies. We were also confronted with questions about our own theoretical

and methodological groundings, and the personal politics of everyday spaces. As new

scholars, we had to learn to carry out research within this problematic, to re-bound the

spaces of our research, and re-imagine a our dissertation project.

While this piece focuses on PhD research, and the challenges we faced were unique to

our projects, the underlying lessons are perhaps more broadly useful. As Cerwonka and

Malkki (2007, 17) suggest, ‘the process [of fieldwork] is characterized by partial

understanding, as well as floods of insight, in a process that is more spiral in nature than

linear and cumulative’. Thinking about the research process in this way – as a malleable,

fluid extension of one’s initial vision – enables one to negotiate fieldwork as an

undertaking inevitably accompanied by edits, revisions, and feedback, especially during

the transition from a neat plan on paper to a realized project. In particular, the researcher

has to be willing to negotiate the unknown in any new project, and recognize that this may

mean flexibility regarding anything from the emotional challenges accompanying one’s

arrival in the field, to the logistics of where to live, to the very foundations of the project

itself. The field, after all, is not a static, self-contained place, but a morphing intersection

of different – and now linked – realities.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Kafui Attoh, Kate Coddington, Dana Hill, Matthew Himley, Serin Houston,In Paik, and Katie Wells for extremely thoughtful, productive critical readings of various drafts ofthis manuscript, as well as two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.

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Notes

1. Email: nancy_hiemstra@emerson.edu2. Feminist geographers, in particular, have paid special attention to challenging the notion of the

field as a place to go to that is discrete from the researcher’s home (Driver 2000; England 1994;Hyndman 2001; Katz 1994; Kobayashi 1994; Sparke 1996), focusing instead on a notion of‘betweenness’ that can displace the field as separate from the academy (Sparke 1996).

3. Recognizing that each research project is unique and that we cannot generalize across projects,we focus instead on calling attention to the concrete challenges that emerged in the transitionfrom proposal writing to field research.

4. Movilidad Humana, a department within the Catholic organization Pastoral Social.5. We understand feminist epistemology as knowledge production permeated with constant

awareness of socially constructed difference, particularly gender but also myriad other axesalong which power hierarchies are built and maintained. Indeed, feminist epistemology focuseson relationships of power that can both ‘oppress’ and ‘privilege’ individuals and groups,producing different ways of knowing and influencing what counts as knowledge (Cope 2002).

6. Cope (2002, 50) defines methodology as a ‘combination of a set of methods with a particularepistemology’. Jones et al. (1997) describe methodology as situated between theory and method,and as such, a dynamic and contested field (see also Jenkins et al. 2003).

7. Fondo Ecuatoriano Populorum Progressio (FEPP).8. While Price (2001) urges researchers in rural places, especially women, to live with families

whenever possible, Emily was both unable and unwilling to find a family to live with because oflack of space in indigenous families’ houses, and dietary concerns and lack of drinking water.

9. While living with the nuns limited her ethnographic research, Emily also found great value in aspace and time separate from the ‘field’ (Myers 2001).

10. Frohlick (2002, 49) notes important exceptions in the parentheses at the end of this statement:‘ . . . (although see England 1994; McDowell 1992; Mattingly and Falconer Al-Hindi 1995;Bondi 2003)’.

11. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this point.

Notes on contributors

Emily Billo is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Geography at Syracuse University (SU). Herresearch interests are grounded in political ecology and rural development, and focus on oilextraction and indigenous livelihoods. Previous research examined indigenous social movements inthe Ecuadorian Amazon region. Current research focuses on corporate social responsibility programsof a private multinational oil company operating in Ecuador. She explores impacts and effects ofthese programs on indigenous communities in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon region. Emily’sdoctoral field research was supported by an Inter-American Foundation Grassroots DevelopmentPhD Fellowship, a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant(#0825763), SUMaxwell School Program on Latin America and the Caribbean, SUMaxwell SchoolRoscoe Martin Fund for Research, and SU Department of Geography.

Nancy Hiemstra is a Scholar in Residence in the Institute for Liberal Arts and InterdisciplinaryStudies at Emerson College. Her research interests are grounded in political and feminist geography,and focus on migration, immigration policies, and daily life. Previous research examined Latinoimmigration to small-town Colorado. Current research investigates consequences in Ecuador of USmigrant detention and deportation, and it also considers the relationship between US ‘homeland’security and the creation of insecurity at the scale of the home in both the USA and in countries ofmigrant origin. Nancy’s doctoral fieldwork was supported by a National Science FoundationDoctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (#0802801), Syracuse University (SU) MaxwellSchool John L. Palmer Fund, SU Department of Geography, and the SU Maxwell School GoekjianResearch Grant. Nancy has published articles in Antipode and Social and Cultural Geography.

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ABSTRACT TRANSLATIONS

Mediacion del desorden: ampliacion de las ideas de flexibilidad, reflexividad, y

encarnacion en el trabajo de campo

Este manuscrito apunta a ayudar a los investigadores y las investigadoras a pensar sobre

los desafıos generales que se presentan en las primeras etapas del trabajo de campo. En

particular, abordamos la transicion desde una propuesta de investigacion clara y concisa a

la iniciacion de un proyecto a menudo complicada y desprolija. Basandonos en registros

autobiograficos de nuestros propios proyectos de investigacion de doctorado, nos

centramos en los dilemas que pueden surgir para investigadores e investigadoras guiados o

guiadas por la epistemologıa y metodologıa feministas. Primero, analizamos los

parametros con respecto a cambios aceptables a las preguntas y planes originales de

investigacion. Tomando nota de que una propuesta cuidadosamente planeada puede

cambiar dramaticamente cuando comienza el trabajo de campo, nos basamos en literaturas

feministas para ampliar y concretar la nocion de flexibilidad en el proceso de

investigacion. Segundo, nos preguntamos sobre la relacion entre teorıa, epistemologıa, y

metodo a medida que la investigadora se sumerge en el trabajo de campo. Mientras los

desafıos logısticos pueden volverse prioritarios, las cuestiones teoricas y epistemologicas

pueden languidecer temporariamente. Tercero, consideramos las muchas formas en las

que la vida personal y en el campo de la investigadora se entremezclan mutuamente para

dar forma a la manera en que se lleva a cabo la investigacion. Ponemos enfasis en la

importancia de considerar – tanto antes como durante la investigacion – que significan en

el trabajo de campo los conceptos de reflexividad y encarnacion, especialmente para la

investigadora en terminos de las necesidades personales y las realidades logısticas. Por

ultimo, mientras sugerimos que hay ciertas presiones unicas que dan forma a las primeras

etapas del perıodo de la investigacion de campo para los estudiantes de doctorado,

concluimos el trabajo centrandonos en las formas en que las lecciones aprendidas durante

nuestras propias experiencias podrıan ser generalmente utiles para todos los y las

investigadores/as en las primeras etapas del trabajo de campo.

Palabras claves: trabajo de campo; metodologıa; flexibilidad; reflexividad; encarnacion;

Ecuador

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