A Turn Toward Caring Research: Iterative Consent, Reflexive Multilingual Methods, and Reciprocal Knowledge Production

A Turn Toward Caring Research: Iterative Consent, Reflexive Multilingual Methods, and Reciprocal Knowledge Production
Olivia Orosco
The Professional Geographer, 7 October 2024
Abstract
The discipline of geography continues to redress historically violent methods and move toward a more ethical and intentional research practice, one hopes. Derived from research with professional immigrant Latina caregivers during the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic (2021–2022), this article offers a reflective approach to the growing conversation of more intentional geographical methods. Learning from feminist and Indigenous methodologies as intertwining, this project takes reciprocity and accountability to and with the caregivers seriously. The research combines artistic portraiture and ethnographic methods to center caregivers as knowledge creators deserving of respect, attention, and artistic portrayal. Collaborative portraits, created by BIPOC artists, were part of the fifteen semistructured testimonio conversations and allowed the tangible centering of caregivers as people to be seen and heard. Learning from the caregivers themselves and through reflective work on methods, this article theorizes a process of iterative consent, multilingual methods, and reciprocal knowledge production and asks what a more ethical and accountable research partnership can and should look like.