Do familiarity breeds contempt? About the researcher's distance as microgeographical specificity.

Keywords: microgeography, distance, place, scale, method, participant observation,
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 74

Abstract

From my PhD research, and especially from my participant observation experience, I suggest thinking about the proximity between the scientist and his object as a specificity of microgeographical approach. This proximity is expressed in the fieldwork by the distance when the researcher is confronted with the people and situations he wishes to study. Whether physical (in act or in interaction), symbolic (socio-cultural significations) or critical (reflexivity, ethics, and involvement of the researcher), it appear that the distance could qualified a microgeographic perspective. On the one hand, the nature of this distance determines the accessibility of the researcher to some element (Elwood S. A., Martin D. G., 2000) that couldn’t be provide by other ways. On the other hand, this distance could involve the researcher up to a certain point where he cannot ignore his own place into his own research. So, I will intend to show that in such approaches, in addition to adopting a reflexive posture, it is especially important to consider oneself as "part of the object of the research". Therefore, the concept of place, understood as the complex relationship between a location, a social position, and norms of uses (and not just a location), is important in the methodological reflection. In other words, microgeographic specificity would go beyond the threshold of the scale of analysis (or the size of the object studied) to also include the researcher himself in the object of his study.