From lines to circles: love as a component of validity

Abstract

In this paper, we argue that love is not only compatible with validity in social inquiry but is an essential part of it. The work of coming to know others is similar to the work of emotional relationship, and the two overlap. In the ethnographic tradition, validity, or trustworthiness in research is established through practices like transparency about one’s position, careful listening, detailed sensory description, time in the field, participant feedback, participation in daily activities, acknowledgment of impermanence, willingness to set aside assumptions and an attempt to engage readers with the community being studied. We argue that these activities are core both to valid studies and to love. The epistemological understanding of love in our ethnography goes beyond rational and objective notions of research. It includes them but it acknowledges, too, that affect and recognition are fundamental to how we make sense of the world. We invite qualitative researchers to enlarge the scope of academic discourse by including love explicitly; both as a rationale for research and as a support for the trustworthiness of our findings.

Keywords:

• Qualitative
• ethnography
• love
• validity
• feminism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 While this is not a common approach, others, like Laura (2016), Narayan (2007) and Behar (2013), have provided beautiful accounts of family members in their ethnographic writing.

2 This is also true in quantitative inquiry, although it is less often made explicit.

3 An intention of this kind is expressed in the title of Cree author Wilson’s book, Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods (2008).

4 In 2006, Lionel Tiger made the following critique of Clifford Geertz in an obituary: “He widened the strange gap between the social and natural sciences. What? Is social behavior not as natural as yogurt?”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lucinda Carspecken

Lucinda Carspecken is a Lecturer in Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methodology at Indiana University. She is interested in the non-cognitive aspects of social inquiry, and in its history. She edited Love in the Time of Ethnography: Essays on Connection as a Focus and Basis for Research (2018), which looks at relationship as a way of knowing. Her current writing explores historical examples of ethnography and autoethnography.

Pooja Saxena

Pooja Saxena is an assistant professor of education at Cottey College, Missouri. Her research draws on critical theories of education, decolonizing feminist theories in science, sociocultural analysis of policy formation and appropriation, and innovative methodologies embedded in an ethic of care.