ABSTRACT

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.

part |30 pages

Introduction

part I|39 pages

Methodological challenges

chapter 2|8 pages

An uncomfortable position

Making sense of field encounters through intimate reflections

chapter 4|11 pages

In the skin

Intimate acts in economic globalization

chapter 5|11 pages

Navigating intimate insider status

Bridging audiences through writing and presenting

part II|58 pages

Emergent effects of including one’s own story

chapter 6|13 pages

Intimate creativity

Using creative practice to express intimate worlds

chapter 8|12 pages

Open for business?

First forays into collaborative autobiographical writing in extractive northern British Columbia

chapter 9|9 pages

Walking the line between the professional and personal

Using autobiography in invisible disability research

chapter 10|11 pages

Are we sitting comfortably?

Doing-writing to embody thinking-with

part III|41 pages

Multiple aspects of researching intimacy

chapter 11|9 pages

Accelerating intimacy?

Digital health and humanistic discourse

chapter 12|7 pages

To hold and be held

Engaging with suffering at end of life through a consideration of personal writing

chapter 14|10 pages

Intimacy, animal emotion and empathy

Multispecies intimacy as slow research practice

part IV|54 pages

Analytical methods as part of writing

chapter 15|7 pages

Bearing witness to geographies of life and death

Intimate writing and violent geographies

chapter 16|8 pages

Becoming fieldnotes

chapter 17|15 pages

Hiding in the garden

Autoethnography and intimate spaces

chapter 18|11 pages

Death, dying and decision-making in an intensive care unit

Tracing micro-connections through auto-methods

chapter 19|11 pages

Places of the open season

part |12 pages

Concluding remarks

chapter 20|10 pages

Intimate research acts