Carnets de Géographes (Dec 2023)
Faire de la géographie féministe à distance : retour sur un défi méthodologique
Abstract
This article deals with the ethical and methodological challenges faced by a research in feminist geography conducted during the covid-19 pandemic. Exploring the articulations between professional and domestic labour within domestic spaces, it draws upon a mix of interviews and home visits conducted in 2021 in Strasbourg, France, with women who are mothers while also holding executive jobs. This research was heavily impacted by the restrictions linked to the pandemic, but these unsteady working conditions proved to be heuristic. The construction of the caring relationships at the heart of this research was also impacted by distance, as it heavily relies on emotions and the body. Similarly, access to participant’s homes, vital for understanding the materiality of power relations within domestic spaces, was often impossible. Thus, after discussing the chance encounter of the author with feminist geography, this paper shows how feminist methodologies inspired the strategies to remedy these constraints and shows how they enriched the initial methodology by encouraging co-construction of research data. It offers a reflexive reading of the geographer’s work, both physical and emotional, that allows such a research to exist.
