Geographies of failure: Reflections from a Participatory Action Research on “Human Trafficking” in Nepal.

Keywords: Participatory Action Research; Failure; Impact; Human Trafficking; Nepal
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Valorising the success of research is essential in showcasing its ’impact’. This demand from the researchers to generate various forms and degrees of impact has the potential to weed out the messiness of the research process, thereby downplaying the importance of failure. Whilst critical and feminist geographers have started to discuss the importance of highlighting failure as a central component of doing human geography, the topic is yet to find its full conceptual traction both within and beyond the discipline. In this paper, I seek to place the concept of failure at the centre stage of research as moments with immense conceptual and political potentialities. Drawing on a participatory action research project in the so-called ‘human trafficking prone’ region of Nepal, I first aim to unpick sites and moments of failures that permeated throughout the research process. I then showcase the political and conceptual potentialities of thinking-with-failure. Finally, unearthing the complex geographies of failure, I conceptualise failure as the constitutive other of research and argue that acknowledging, examining, and sharing failure is essential in making any claims concerning the impact of the research.