ABSTRACT
This methodological reflection was catalyzed by a research project conducted in suburban Toronto inquiring into youth attitudes to diversity and the changing geography of the suburb. The first methodological dilemma concerns design when so much is still unknown as a research study begins. In addition to methodological adaptability, Wessels addresses the puzzles presented by empirical materials and their affective draw to the researcher. In the pre-analysis stage, although little sense can yet be made of the data and appropriate theoretical tools may not yet have been found, Wessels suggests the need for sufficient researcher time and space to adequately address ‘not knowing’, to read widely, and to adopt a methodology of patient waiting for appropriate and relevant theory. Wessels offers examples of methodological practices that evolved over the course of the research. In particular, ethnographic interviews-while-walking became a kind of walking methodology that finally became a placed compositional performance that included the participation of the nonhuman. These encounters and the empirical materials they yielded are discussed in relation to the theory of Deleuze, social geographers, and new materialists. Wessel concludes by considering the implications of placed compositional performances as a methodology that can reposition the human to include the nonhuman as agentive participant.
