39 Postcolonial Positionality
-
Rishika Mukhopadhyay
Abstract
This chapter unpacks the politics of fieldwork enacted by Global South researchers working in Northern institutions, who find themselves within a web of colonial power relations between the local and the global, field and home. Questioning the division between home and field, they have reflected on the micropolitics of navigating between these two spaces. Straddling between multiple body politics and geopolitics of knowledge production – across the scale of the neighborhood and the colonial metropole, scholars have argued against the dualistic binary of insider-outsider and self-other. I focus on those unspoken politics that give the postcolonial researcher a double insider status. From being a daughter embedded in the neighborhood’s moral code to responding to the colonial residue of the field, the chapter illustrates how these conflicting positionalities are harnessed in the fieldwork producing nuanced emplaced knowledge. It suggests that fieldwork politics for a female postcolonial researcher materializes through her perceived embeddedness and mobile locatedness in multiple scales often creating conditions for her to come closer to the field.
Abstract
This chapter unpacks the politics of fieldwork enacted by Global South researchers working in Northern institutions, who find themselves within a web of colonial power relations between the local and the global, field and home. Questioning the division between home and field, they have reflected on the micropolitics of navigating between these two spaces. Straddling between multiple body politics and geopolitics of knowledge production – across the scale of the neighborhood and the colonial metropole, scholars have argued against the dualistic binary of insider-outsider and self-other. I focus on those unspoken politics that give the postcolonial researcher a double insider status. From being a daughter embedded in the neighborhood’s moral code to responding to the colonial residue of the field, the chapter illustrates how these conflicting positionalities are harnessed in the fieldwork producing nuanced emplaced knowledge. It suggests that fieldwork politics for a female postcolonial researcher materializes through her perceived embeddedness and mobile locatedness in multiple scales often creating conditions for her to come closer to the field.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Acknowledgements
- Contents VII
- 1 Introduction 1
-
Part I: Foundations
- 2 The Feminist Geography Of Feminist Political Geography 18
- 3 Feminist Geopolitics 33
- 4 Intimate Geopolitics 51
- 5 Nationalism 65
- 6 De/coloniality 77
- 7 Decolonizing Feminist Geopolitics 89
- 8 Trauma 103
- 9 Peace 115
-
Part II: Critical Interventions
- 10 Black Futurity 129
- 11 Racial Capitalism 141
- 12 Populism 153
- 13 Electoral Democracy 165
- 14 Crip Geographies 177
- 15 Queer Geographies 189
- 16 Trans Geographies 201
- 17 Cuerpo-Territorio 213
- 18 Geographies Of Technology 227
- 19 More-Than-Human Geographies 239
- 20 Austerity 251
- 21 Labor 263
- 22 Health 275
- 23 Environmental Justice 287
-
Part III: Spaces
- 24 Territory 303
- 25 The Nation-State 315
- 26 The Border 329
- 27 Spaces Of Refuge And Asylum 341
- 28 The Body 353
- 29 Home 367
- 30 The Workplace 379
- 31 The City 391
- 32 The Rural 403
- 33 The Ocean 415
- 34 The Ship 427
- 35 Public Transport 439
- 36 Infrastructure 451
- 37 The Prison 461
- 38 Food 475
-
Part IV: Methodologies
- 39 Postcolonial Positionality 487
- 40 Digital Methods And Community-Engaged Research 499
- 41 Fieldwork 511
- 42 Ethnography 525
- 43 Creative Political Geography 537
- 44 Mobile Methods 549
- 45 Life Histories 563
- 46 Black Feminist Literary Methods 575
- 47 Historical Approaches 587
- List of Contributors 599
- Index
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Acknowledgements
- Contents VII
- 1 Introduction 1
-
Part I: Foundations
- 2 The Feminist Geography Of Feminist Political Geography 18
- 3 Feminist Geopolitics 33
- 4 Intimate Geopolitics 51
- 5 Nationalism 65
- 6 De/coloniality 77
- 7 Decolonizing Feminist Geopolitics 89
- 8 Trauma 103
- 9 Peace 115
-
Part II: Critical Interventions
- 10 Black Futurity 129
- 11 Racial Capitalism 141
- 12 Populism 153
- 13 Electoral Democracy 165
- 14 Crip Geographies 177
- 15 Queer Geographies 189
- 16 Trans Geographies 201
- 17 Cuerpo-Territorio 213
- 18 Geographies Of Technology 227
- 19 More-Than-Human Geographies 239
- 20 Austerity 251
- 21 Labor 263
- 22 Health 275
- 23 Environmental Justice 287
-
Part III: Spaces
- 24 Territory 303
- 25 The Nation-State 315
- 26 The Border 329
- 27 Spaces Of Refuge And Asylum 341
- 28 The Body 353
- 29 Home 367
- 30 The Workplace 379
- 31 The City 391
- 32 The Rural 403
- 33 The Ocean 415
- 34 The Ship 427
- 35 Public Transport 439
- 36 Infrastructure 451
- 37 The Prison 461
- 38 Food 475
-
Part IV: Methodologies
- 39 Postcolonial Positionality 487
- 40 Digital Methods And Community-Engaged Research 499
- 41 Fieldwork 511
- 42 Ethnography 525
- 43 Creative Political Geography 537
- 44 Mobile Methods 549
- 45 Life Histories 563
- 46 Black Feminist Literary Methods 575
- 47 Historical Approaches 587
- List of Contributors 599
- Index
