Acceptable Thresholds: Learning From Critical Disability Methodology to Inform Embodied, Qualitative Research

Abstract

The writers of this article were brought together by questions of pain. Informed by our own experience with research on difficult and personally meaningful topics, this article explores the value and risks of emotional commitment in qualitative research methods and the corporeal consequences that can result from this commitment. We consider how stress informs an embodied practice of qualitative research, taking into account the thresholds and limits of the body and how these limits shape and transform data collection and analysis. While we endorse the importance of subjectivity in research, we investigate the tension between when physical effects of stress are necessary and needed and when they are harmful to the researcher. This exploration of embodiment has made us question practices of accessibility in the training and process of conducting difficult, personally demanding work. We turn to critical disability methodology to better understand the embodied consequences of research, arguing that researchers often experience continuous negotiation between their own physical well-being and their emotional and identity-based commitments. Tenets from critical disability methodology help resist the dehumanization and mechanization of qualitative researchers by focusing on, rather than ignoring, the body. We emphasize a need for more instructional practices that directly and routinely acknowledge the tension between embodiment and subjectivity in research and that embolden researchers to speak of them, to consider them in their research protocols, and ultimately to determine their own acceptable thresholds. Our goal is to enact more equitable and inclusive qualitative research practices that account for physical and emotional pain.