Article

Positionality, relationality,
place, and land: Considerations Qualitative Research

for ethical research with 1–16

© The Author(s) 2024

communities Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14687941241246174
journals.sagepub.com/home/qrj

Christopher C Jadallah
University of California, USA

Abstract
Attention to researcher positionality is an important component of qualitative research, particu-
larly in research done with and for communities. However, discussions of researcher positionality
are often limited in that they narrowly focus on positionality with respect to human research par-
ticipants and whether the researcher is an insider or outsider. In this article, I build with the con-
tributions of Indigenous scholarship to make a methodological argument for broadening our
notions of positionality to consider relationality with respect to place and land. Relationality is
a core tenet across many Indigenous epistemologies and research methodologies, and refers to
the interconnected and mutually constitutive relationships between people and land. I argue
that building and participating in relationships with land—as a core methodological consideration
in qualitative research—can catalyze new possibilities for ethical research in which researchers are
answerable to complex social and ecological relations in the places where they live and work.

Keywords
positionality, relationality, reflexivity, place, land

Introduction
Recognizing the often harmful and extractive legacies of the social sciences and academic
research more broadly, a growing number of researchers are taking up questions around
the ethics of doing research in, with, and for diverse communities (Paris and Winn, 2014;
Tachine and Nicolazzo, 2022; Tuck, 2009). Emerging from these longstanding discus-
sions is an increasing recognition of the need for researchers to weave consideration of
positionality into their work, and to build meaningful and reciprocal relationships with
communities. In this article, I highlight and draw on Indigenous epistemologies and
methodologies to further contribute to this discussion and make an argument for

Corresponding author:
Christopher C Jadallah, School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles,
USA.
Email: cjadallah@ucla.edu
2 Qualitative Research 0(0)

centering relations with place and land in research—not necessarily as the focus of
inquiry, but as fundamental to the process of inquiry. By this, I mean working to inten-
tionally enter into right relations with land just as one might work to enter into right rela-
tions with human research participants. After reviewing discussions of positionality and
relationality as key tenets of ethical research, as well as scholarship on place and land as
instrumental in shaping human activity, I consider what possibilities might emerge if
researchers take seriously their obligations to place and land.
These arguments for centering place and land in research emerge from my own stand-
point as a Palestinian researcher born and currently living in what is now known as the
United States. I come from a long lineage of fallaheen, or peasant farmers, whose liveli-
hoods are dependent on reciprocal relations with land. Land is a central tenet in the
Palestinian struggle for liberation, and sumud, or steadfastness, has long been a defining
feature of Palestinians’ collective identity stemming from our rootedness in land. Like the
lands of North America, Palestine has also been harmed by colonialism, with deep ties
linking American and Israeli settler projects (Barakat, 2018; Khalidi, 2020; Salaita,
2016). Sumud takes on new meaning in the face of settler colonialism’s contemporary
manifestations in Palestine, from ongoing home demolitions, attacks on olive orchards,
and restrictions on movement as part of a broader project of dispossession. While
there are many differences in various Native American and Palestinian sovereignty strug-
gles, there are also striking connections (Salaita, 2016). This has in part inspired my com-
mitment to engage with Indigenous onto-epistemologies as visitor living on unceded
Indigenous lands in California. Drawing from this positionality, and building with
Indigenous epistemologies, I offer a vision to consider how qualitative researchers
might work to be in better relation with respect to land as part of a more ethical research
practice.
To begin this article, I first review the imperative of conducting research with commu-
nities rather than on communities. This requires attention to positionality and reflexivity,
and provides a context from which new research practices—such as the writing of posi-
tionality statements—have emerged. After exploring the strengths and limitations of such
practices, I then turn to Indigenous conceptualizations of relationality to more fully draw
out what it means to do ethical research grounded in relationships not just with human
research participants, but with place and land. I then review the role of place in social
science research before synthesizing these ideas to suggest that researchers’ relationships
with place and land ought to be further considered with respect to positionality.
Ultimately, I suggest that building intentional relationships with land can not only
enrich and strengthen scholarship, but can also ground research in principles of care as
an ethical imperative.

Research ethics in the social sciences

Across disciplines in the social sciences, from sociology, to education, to public health,
and beyond, there exists a wide range of approaches to research that aim to disrupt dom-
inant power dynamics between researchers and the communities in which we work.
Common across these approaches—which are often characterized as participatory or
community-engaged research—are commitments to collaborative and equitable partner-
ships across multiple phases of the research process in which researchers work with and
Jadallah 3

for communities.1 While interrelated and sharing many features in common with one
another, different forms of community-engaged research have distinct theoretical and
methodological foundations, such as participatory action research (Whyte, 1991) and
community-based participatory research (Israel et al., 2005). Wallerstein and Duran
(2003: 25) describe how these approaches can be traced to two different traditions: the
Northern tradition, focusing on “collaborative utilization-focused research with practical
goals of system improvement,” and the Southern tradition, focusing on “openly emanci-
patory research, which challenges the historical colonizing practices of research and pol-
itical domination of knowledge by the elites.”
Here, Wallerstein and Duran (2003) importantly mention the historical colonizing
practices of research and the political domination of knowledge. These legacies are per-
vasive across the social sciences, which have long played an active role in justifying and
perpetuating colonialism as well as many other linked systems of oppression. “Research,”
as a result, has been rendered a dirty word in many communities that have been harmed
by these systems (Tuck and Yang, 2014). When researchers begin building the relation-
ships necessary for their studies, they bring with them the history of their particular
research institution as well as other researchers, broadly. These relationships between
researchers and participants then unfold within said historical and institutional context
of trust or mistrust (Wallerstein and Duran, 2003). Recognizing these histories and
how they manifest in the present, Patel (2014) makes the argument that researchers are
“answerable” to the deep and intertwined trajectories of the academy, settler colonialism,
anti-Blackness. Answerability refers to the responsibilities we have as research to steward
knowledge with regards to communities, rather than claim ownership to said knowledge
as property.
Qualitative researchers in particular have increasingly taken up the call to work against
longstanding power asymmetries between researchers and communities (Paris and Winn,
2014; Tachine and Nicolazzo, 2022). A core tenet of qualitative research, after all, is to
highlight the stories of research participants in their own words. Working toward this,
however, is laden with ethical issues. Ethical research practices include but extend far
beyond formal legal requirements for studies with human subjects. Conducting ethical
research requires careful, iterative, and reflexive attention to dynamics of interaction
and engagement across the research process. Even for studies that might not be explicitly
characterized as participatory or community-engaged, it is becoming more widely recog-
nized that attention to the process of how researchers engage with communities involves
issues of power (Thapar-Björkert and Henry, 2004). Consideration of researcher position-
ality and relationality offers an opportunity to undo legacies of extractive social science
research and support more ethical and reciprocal partnerships between researchers and
communities.

Positionality
Discussions of researcher positionality in the social sciences have emerged partly in
relation to the ethical dimensions of scholarly inquiry . Broadly, positionality refers to
the ways in which researchers’ perspectives and stances are rooted in experiences that
emerge from their particular social locations—often along lines of race, gender, and
class—in connection to the specific context of their study (Rowe, 2014). This concept
4 Qualitative Research 0(0)

draws largely from feminist research traditions that reject notions of research as an object-
ive, neutral, or value-free practice as it has been conventionally understood in dominant
scientific paradigms (Collins, 1997; Davies, 2023; Haraway, 1988; Harding, 1991; Rose,
1997), instead recognizing how our standpoints inherently provide a lens for making
sense of the world around us.
Conversations about what it means to do research as an insider or outsider (effectively,
considering one’s positionality) have long occurred among qualitative researchers, and
specifically ethnographers. Belonging to a particular community can offer unique insights
for doing research with said community, while also coming with a set of challenges. For
instance, a researcher may already come to a project with a better, more thorough under-
standing of local customs and practices and with an existing foundation of trust.
However, the same researcher might now need to negotiate the competing demands of
one’s dual role as a researcher and community member if other community members
have particular expectations for what role the researcher will play in community life.
In reality, being an insider or outsider with respect to a particular community is too
binary of a lens for conceptualizing researcher-participant relationships given the com-
plexity and dynamism of cultures and communities (Collins, 1986; Dwyer and Buckle,
2009; Merriam et al., 2001; Paris and Winn, 2014). Community, for this reason, can
often be a problematic term when it is employed vaguely. Furthermore, researcher and
research participants’ positionalities—as well as the power dynamics between them—
are complex, nuanced, and evolve and shift over time, thus requiring ongoing attention
(Schulz, 2021; Thapar-Björkert and Henry, 2004).
Issues of positionality show up frequently in our methodological approaches. Notably,
qualitative researchers do not just collect data—we produce data through our relation-
ships “such that the data collector is explicit in the data themselves” (Small and
Calarco, 2022: 12). This process imbued with ethical dilemmas concerned with power
(Krystalli, 2020). San Pedro and Kinloch (2017), for instance, critique dominant
approaches to interview research as extractive, “where only one story is being revealed
in the absence of another.” They offer "critical storying" as an alternative approach,
which is described as a process where both researcher and research participants inter-
weave and merge stories together in a relational process. Others, like Martinez (2016),
discuss the positionality of research tools. In the context of highly surveilled popula-
tions—such as Black and Latinx youth in schools—the presence of audiovisual recording
equipment evokes technologies of surveillance as part of a broader project of discipline,
punishment, and control. This merits further interrogation, argues Martinez (2016), of
both the ethics and implications of how our research tools shape activities in the settings
we study.
This interrogation is a key component of reflexivity. Reflexivity concerns the research-
er’s conscious self-understanding of the research process and their role in it, and is a strat-
egy employed in which the researcher can manage the “analytical oscillation” between
observation and theory (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1983; Wainwright, 1997). In other
words, reflexivity is both a state of mind and set of actions regarding the researchers’
influence vis-a-vis what is being studied (Probst and Berenson, 2014). In such research,
the researcher takes a negotiated stance where they create dialogue with community
members through context-based interpretation and portrayal of knowledge (Fine,
1994). Reflexive researchers consider who they are in relation to those studied as this
Jadallah 5

has an effect on the data being produced and how it is interpreted (Berger, 2015; Small
and Calarco, 2022). For example, researchers’ background knowledge and tacit belief
inform which observations are worthy of annotation during the writing of ethnographic
fieldnotes (Wolfinger, 2002). It is impossible to eliminate these subjectivities; rather iden-
tifying them and monitoring them in relation to the research—and doing so transparently
—is incumbent on the researcher (Merriam and Tisdell, 2015). Furthermore, eliminating
these subjectivities need not be a goal. Theorizing from one’s positionality or standpoint
can actually enrich research by providing a valid source of knowledge from which to
layer in new insights, as argued by Black feminist sociologist Patricia Hill Collins (1986).
When researchers make their positionalities explicit, and reflexively attend to how
their positionality informs the research, it can provide readers with greater transparency
and understanding about the context from which claims are made. As a result, it has
become increasingly common for researchers to include positionality statements in
their research. This can be a powerful practice. However, as Bang and Vossoughi
(2016: 177) point out, “attention to researchers’ positionalities is not a routine checklist
of identity focused on representational diversity.” Writing positionality statements runs
the risk of becoming a box-checking exercise for researchers, in which laying out the
dimensions of our identities (as if identities were static and stable traits) is something
done out of a sense of obligation for publication and without the deep, ongoing, and itera-
tive consideration required as part of reflexivity. These sorts of statements may provide
information as to who the researcher is, but often do little to inform readers if and how the
researcher’s positionality shaped the work of the study. To address this, researchers
should consider their positionalities in relation to the study’s specific context, where
they draw connections between how facets of their experience show up in the work.
Boveda and Annamma (2023) critique how positionality statements are often written,
offering instead a framework and accompanying series of questions for researchers to
consider focused on the onto-epistemic, sociohistorical, and sociocultural dimensions
of their positioning (e.g., “How are professional situatedness, power dynamics, and col-
laborations between researchers and coauthors impacted by multiple oppressions?” 6).
These questions, they note, are intended to be engaged throughout the research process
from design to publication instead of just while reporting findings to colleagues.

Relationality
Discussions of positionality can be further extended by discussions of relationality.
Relationality is a foundational principle across many Indigenous onto-epistemologies
and Indigenous research methodologies (Archibald, 2008; Cajete, 2000; Simpson,
2011). Wording here is important. As Shawn Wilson (2008: 7) writes in the book
Research is Ceremony, “relationships do not merely shape reality, they are reality”
(emphasis original). Lauren Tynan importantly notes, “relationality is not a new meta-
phor to be reaped for academic gain, but a practice bound with responsibilities with kin
and Country” (2021: 598). Foundational to relationality, and vice versa, are notions of
respect, reciprocity, and responsibility (Brayboy et al., 2012; Kirkness and Barnhardt,
1991). These are key tenets of Indigenous research methodologies and research done with
Indigenous peoples, and can additionally guide ethical research practices more broadly.
Relationality, as well as these other tenets, are always spatially and temporally specific,
6 Qualitative Research 0(0)

with particular configurations emerging from the unique contexts of particular research
settings.
While relational ethics are central to “excellent” qualitative research (Tracy, 2010);
relationality stands in contrast to dominant paradigms of social science research in the
United States, where intertwined systems of colonialism and enslavement have relied
on the destruction of relationality (Halle-Erby, 2022). It also stands in contrast to aca-
demia by and large, which prioritizes neoliberal notions of productivity at expense of
the time and work necessary for cultivating authentic and meaningful relationships
(Museus and Wang, 2022). In examining how neoliberal logics shape research design,
Museus and Wang (2022: 25) further argue, “relationships are not just a tool to
execute scholarly inquiry. They are fundamental to the community and collective struggle
that neoliberalism seeks to erase.” Slow approaches to scholarship—and support for such
approaches at the institutional level—are necessary to build meaningful relationships that
counter neoliberal logics pervading academic research (Bergland, 2018; Mason, 2021).
Relationality can be engaged by researchers in many ways. Figueroa (2014) provides a
powerful and detailed example of this in the context of an ethnographic study examining
questions of citizenship, language, and educational experiences for migrant families. As a
participant observer, Figueroa developed intimate and trusting relationships with the
Utuado-Alvarez family to the point that the two parents, Marta and Carlos, asked
Figueroa to consider taking custody of their children in the case of their detention or
deportation. They later went on to ask that Figueroa become an adoptive parent. This hap-
pened as Figueroa was preparing to exit the field, and illustrates ethical dilemmas that can
emerge in relational approaches to research. In another example, Halle-Erby (2022) uti-
lizes autoethnography to provide an overview of specific relational moves employed
during a qualitative study with educational researchers as the participants. Halle-Erby
(2022: 15) argues, “describing relationality in methodological terms structures it as a
process, a way of conducting research. However, relationality is a way of being in the
world with methodological implications.”
Beyond serving as a broader stance (or way of being in the world) that can inform
methodology at a higher level, relationality can also inform specific methods in qualita-
tive research.2 Fujii, for instance, describes relational interviewing as an ethical approach
to generating data that is grounded in an interpretivist onto-epistemology, enacted
through “building working relationships, rather than rapport” (3). Turning to analytic
moves, Marin (2020) offers “ambulatory sequences” as a relational unit of analysis
grounded in Indigenous epistemologies that helps make visible the geographical dimen-
sions of learning. In another example, Hecht and Nelson (2022) take relational processes
between young people and more-than-human beings as a unit of analysis for understand-
ing the formation of environmental identities. By expanding beyond the level of the indi-
vidual to understand various forms of activity, these methods “operationalize”
relationality and extend our understanding of social phenomena as dependent on interac-
tions between individuals and their contexts.
Importantly, across many Indigenous epistemologies, relationality does not just refer
to relations between human actors—it includes relations with land and with kin (Cajete,
2000; Meissner, 2022; Tynan, 2021). Ecological, feminist, and eco-feminist scholarship
has similarly articulated that all being exist in interconnected webs of relationships
(Barad, 2007; Kimmerer, 2010; Simard, 2021). Relationships between people and land
Jadallah 7

are similarly organized on principles of reciprocity, for instance, in the practice of giving
and receiving gifts (Kimmerer, 2010; Meissner, 2022), and are not just understood, but
felt (Tynan, 2021). Bang and Marin (2015: 532) remind us how the privileging of humans
over other actors in the world “divests us of responsibility, humility, and reciprocity,”
describing how many Indigenous onto-epistemologies understand more-than-human
beings as acting with agency and intentionality. Thus, land plays an active role in consti-
tuting relational processes, and becomes something to which we are also responsible in
considering how to be in the world relationally.

Place and land

Often missing from discussions of research ethics, positionality, and relationality are
issues of place and land. This echoes the treatment of place in social sciences more
broadly, where it is not commonly engaged in its full complexity. As Tuck and
McKenzie (2014) point out in the book Place in Research, researchers often define
their studies by what was learned, how it was learned, and when it was learned, not
giving as much attention to where. If anything, researchers often describe the “where”
in just a few sentences as part of the research site description when writing up method-
ology. These tendencies to disregard place in research can be traced to the Cartesian
dualism of mind and body, a colonial logic that allows for claims to universal forms of
knowledge not tethered to place (Bang, 2017; Grosfoguel, 2013; Tuck and McKenzie,
2014).
While discussions of place may be missing from social science research at a high level,
there is still an abundance of literature—particularly in human geography—unpacking the
fundamental role of place in shaping human activity. Broadly, places can be defined as con-
crete locations imbued with meaning, shaped by social, cultural, and political processes
(Massey, 1994; Tuan, 1977). Tzou and Bell (2012: 266) write, “place is simultaneously
structured by and structures human activity.” A core implication of this view is that all
social phenomena occur in places, even if not immediately apparent. Schools, classrooms,
and curricula in the United States, for instance, have sought out placelessness as a defining
feature in the face of neoliberal educational policies (Gruenewald, 2003). Yet, activities in
classrooms are still shaped by the sociocultural context of their material configurations and
schooling as an institution. Whether or not a setting explicitly foregrounds attention to
nature-culture relations—relations commonly associated with conceptualizations of
place—place is still central to human activity and social practice.
Indigenous scholarship often engages land as a concept that is related to place (Tuck
and McKenzie, 2014). Land, in this sense, is imperfect shorthand to refer to the lands,
waters, humans, plants, animals, rocks, air, and other more-than-human beings whose
relations collectively constitute reality. Not just material, land is also constituted by its
spiritual, emotional, and intellectual relations (Styres et al., 2013). Bang et al. (2014)
offer an Indigenous ontology of land as “land is, therefore we are.” From this perspective,
it can be understood that humans only exist in relation to land. This is not to romanticize
Indigenous relations to land, as these relations are highly dynamic and context-
dependent, and cannot be essentialized into static or stereotypical tropes that create an
essentialism in equating Native peoples and nature (Friedel, 2011; Pico, 2017; Yeh
and Bryan, 2015).
8 Qualitative Research 0(0)

There are areas of alignment and divergence between the concepts of place and land.
They both refer to both physical spaces, as well as their broader sociocultural elements.
People shape place and land, and are shaped by place and land. A key departure is that
discussions of land more explicitly refuse notions of settler emplacement and replacement
—where settlers replace Indigenous peoples (Tuck et al., 2014). Processes of settler
emplacement and replacement are central to settler colonialism, a specific form of colo-
nialism in which land is transformed into property that settlers own (Patel, 2014). This
relies on the removal and erasure of Indigenous peoples.3 As mentioned earlier,
Halle-Erby (2022) points out that settler colonialism both contributes to and relies on
the destruction of relationality, as Indigenous peoples’ relations with land pose an obs-
tacle to settler state-building.
Foregrounding relationality takes on new urgency given the social and ecological pre-
carity that threatens the health of lands across the globe (Nxumalo et al., 2022). Threats
such as biodiversity loss and climate change continue to accelerate, with their impacts
disproportionately affecting marginalized communities. At the root of these problems
are sociopolitical systems premised on the domination of nature where land is seen as
a resource from which to extract capital—the same logics that undergird colonialism
(McKittrick, 2020). In the context of the current era, it is imperative that we work to
(re)make more equitable nature-culture relations and live in better relation with land.
What role might there be for researchers in this endeavor?

Moving forward: reflections on positionality, relationality, place,

and land in research
Drawing from a study with Indigenous teachers and students at a Thai school, Meixi
(2022: 16) offers the concept of relational becoming, defined as “an increasing self-
awareness of what it means and what it at stake if we do or do not uphold our unique
roles, relations, and responsibilities to the living world and to other human people.”
Meixi argues that relational becoming ought to be a core pursuit of teaching and learning
endeavors. Building on this articulation, I argue that relational becoming ought also be
foundational in the process of research.
What would it mean for qualitative researchers, particularly those of us committed to
working with and for communities, to expand our conceptualizations of community to
include place and land? Taking this further, what possibilities might emerge if we take
seriously our relationships and responsibilities to place and land as part of our methodo-
logical practice? I offer these questions as a series of friendly provocations for researchers
to consider as we reflect on our positionalities and strive to be in good relation with the
communities in which we work.
Other scholars have engaged in related projects to examine the role that place plays in
processes of qualitative inquiry, particularly with regard to reflexivity and how consider-
ation of place enriches scholarly rigor. This is distinct from the employment of specific
methods—such as walking interviews or participatory mapping—that engage issues of
place. Anderson et al. (2010), for instance, describe a “polylogic approach” to research
in which the researcher, research participants, place of research, and place of method
are recognized as interconnected and having agency within the research encounter.
Similarly, Swaminathan and Mulvihill (2019) offer place-reflexivity as a methodological
Jadallah 9

approach for researchers to foreground place in their analyses of social phenomena. My

argument in this article builds on these previous works in that it calls for centering rela-
tions with place and land in research not only because doing so can lend more nuance to
inquiry; rather, I argue that doing so is a core tenet of ethical research.
What can it look like to center relations with place and land as a feature of ethical
research? Explicitly taking an anticolonial orientation to research, Max Liboiron demon-
strates these practices in the book Pollution is Colonialism (2021). Liboiron names that
what researchers call “field sites” are always Indigenous homelands, and unpacks the
colonial logics through which researchers assume unfettered access to these sites and
their stories. Protocols grounded in principles of relationality and good land relations
guide the work of Liboiron and collaborators, for instance, as they process fish guts to
collect data on plastic pollution. Members of the research team intentionally return fish
guts to the water when their part collecting samples is done, rather than disposing of
them as biohazards (123–126). Through community peer review processes as part of
an anti-colonial and place-based science, Liboiron and collaborators center obligations
to land, including fish, fish harvesters, and community members in Newfoundland as
part of ethical research practice.
Additional examples can be found in the book Underflows written by Cleo Wölfe
Hazard (2022). Drawing upon Indigenous epistemologies—while also making a specific
argument against for queer and trans relational methodologies in the sciences—Wölfle
Hazard posits how queer field affects and kinship rooted in grief, mourning, and ultim-
ately care for more-than-human ecologies can “(re)animate political movements for bio-
diversity, climate justice, and water protection” (34). Wölfle Hazard contrasts the
technical language used when presenting findings in scientific talks with their intimate
relations with water developed through sensory and embodied engagement while collect-
ing data on salmon health. Furthermore, Wölfle Hazard writes how ecologists—like
social scientists—“are trained to find field sites that reflect larger phenomena, which
are usually abstracted from places made up of culturally situated communities and
their more-than-human relations” (148).
When researchers embrace intimate relationships with our field sites and the broader
sets of relations that form them, field sites can take on new meanings in researchers’ lives.
Rather than being locations that researchers visit solely to collect data to which we other-
wise have no personal attachment, our field sites can and should become places marked
by ethics of care. As a key element of relationality, care can guide relationships between
people and place in which the well-being of all is recognized as deeply intertwined (Puig
de la Bellacasa, 2017). In becoming active participants in these relations, researchers can
play a more direct role in supporting social and ecological transformation in which we are
answerable to both our human research participants and the lands in which we work.
To help make visible this type of relationality, I offer examples from my own
practice. Maintaining a relationship with land is an important dimension of my own posi-
tionality as a Palestinian scholar living on Indigenous lands in California. Working in
community with other diasporic farmers of color, I grow, save, and share seeds from
Palestinian heirloom plants—like jadu’i watermelon, baladi tomatoes, and molokhia—
that I initially received either via family or the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library. In
farming together, we work to improve soil health with agroecological practices such as
cover cropping and composting, supporting biocultural diversity in the process. For
10 Qualitative Research 0(0)

example, native bees visit the flowers of our heritage plants, helping to sustain each other
and illustrating the kinds of meaningful connections that can emerge through practices of
relational care. As someone who writes about social and ecological transformation, I see
this work as a way to enact the commitments I write about and a way to build trans-
national solidarities—across people and lands—in rejection of what settler colonialism
would otherwise see to, and in support of a bright and lively future. Relatedly, in my
empirical research, I have worked to build relationships with the places that make up
my study locations just as I have worked to build relationships with the people and orga-
nizations with whom I partner. I have come to care deeply about the futures of these
places—caring that has been deepened through the process of research—and am com-
pelled by a sense of responsibility toward supporting their well-being. In one line of
inquiry, situated in the context of river restoration across watersheds, I intentionally
plan for embodied engagement with water as a key methodological practice. Before,
during, and after data collection and analysis, I spend time with these rivers. I might
shiver from cold water as I swim in creeks and scramble over rocks, or smell the
aroma of native plants whose names I work to learn. I do this both on my own—for
instance, by going on walks between research interviews—and in community with
other people—for instance, by going fishing with research participants and collaborators
during periods of downtime. These everyday practices help me build a relationship with
place, and are not extraneous to the research process. Rather, they help lend more nuance
to both the research process and products, and perhaps more importantly, reinforce my
ethical commitments to the health and well-being of the place itself in an effort to be a
good visitor.
There are numerous ways in which scholars can become more active participants in
relations with land, something that is possible irrespective of whether the research
focus itself attends to questions of place. Doing so can vary based on a number of con-
siderations. Sometimes, researchers work in field sites in close proximity to their primary
residence where they may already hold existing relationships and have ongoing oppor-
tunities to cultivate said relationships. Other times, researchers may only visit more
distant field sites on occasion for limited periods of time. In either scenario, there exist
opportunities for researchers to intentionally build relationships with land as a core
dimension of methodological practice. Just as a researcher might spend time acquainting
themselves with the people in a particular community, they can also spend time acquaint-
ing themselves with land by getting to know its broader inhabitants, rhythms, and rela-
tionships. For instance, they may make time to familiarize themselves with the place
through walking, and learn more about its history in what Liboiron (2021) calls doing
one’s homework. Furthermore, they may identify and take action that supports commu-
nity organizations doing meaningful local work, even if the organization or work does not
have direct ties to the focus of the research study. Over time, researchers can become
more active participants in the sets of relations that make up these places. At the
center of these practices ought to be a commitment to entering into relationships based
on reciprocity, where the study site is more than solely a place to visit and collect
data, but one in which the researcher is committed to sustaining both through and
beyond their research.
Because land is more than just material, and always shaped by broader sociopolitical
processes, getting to know land means that we also get to know Indigenous histories and
Jadallah 11

futures with respect to land. It has become a more common practice in certain spaces to
begin events or talks with a land acknowledgment in which the speaker shares the name
of the Indigenous lands they are on. While valuable in that they work toward refusing
Indigenous erasure, land acknowledgments on their own are insufficient when it comes
to being in relation with Indigenous peoples (Stewart-Ambo and Yang, 2021). More
meaningful next steps entail supporting Indigenous sovereignty and stewardship
efforts. This might involve forming partnerships with Indigenous peoples, particularly
partnerships where Indigenous peoples are in the lead when non-Indigenous scholars
are involved. Focusing specifically on collaborative initiatives oriented toward environ-
mental problem-solving, Reo et al. (2017) offer several principles that support and sustain
engagement of Indigenous peoples in multi-actor partnerships including: respect for
Indigenous knowledges, Indigenous control of knowledge mobilization, intergenera-
tional involvement, Indigenous self-determination, continuous cross-cultural education,
and early involvement of Indigenous peoples.
Researchers can also consider how relations with land might be written up. This could
entail more rich description as to the complex sets of relations that make up our field sites,
in contrast to the typical brevity that characterizes descriptions of the “research context”
in most empirical studies. More vivid depictions of the places in which the research took
place can further contextualize the researchers’ claims and help situate the findings in
their specific contexts. Researchers could also bring descriptions of their relationships
with the field site into the writing of any positionality statement. What relationship did
the researcher have with land before the beginning of the study? If at all, how did the
researcher work to build relations with land throughout the course of the study, and
how did this mediate the research? Stewart-Ambo and Yang (2021) argue that being a
good visitor means being in good relation to land, relations that I argue ought to be con-
sidered in considering one’s positionality. They offer the idea of land as pedagogy, which
means learning from, with, and on the land from Indigenous knowledge holders, with
Indigenous pedagogies, and through Indigenous methodologies as a way to enact
being a good visitor.

Conclusion
Building with Indigenous epistemologies, I have argued for the need to center relation-
ality with respect to place and land in conceptualizing researcher positionality. This
means working intentionally to build relationships of reciprocity and care with the
places in which we live and work, and particularly our field sites. While I focus primarily
on qualitative and community-engaged scholarship that is often place-based in nature,
many of these arguments are transferable to other forms of research, where researchers
can and should consider positionality with respect to land, and work to foreground rela-
tionality in their scholarship. Too often, researchers approach their field sites solely as
places from which to extract data. When researchers do consider their positionality and
work to enter into reciprocal and respectful relations in communities, their efforts often
focus narrowly with regards to human actors. Indigenous onto-epistemologies push us
to broaden our notions of community to consist of both human and more-than-human
actors with complex sets of relations. Becoming active participants in these relations
can catalyze forms of research that work against settler colonialism and are accountable
12 Qualitative Research 0(0)

to the health and revitalization of land, a necessary project in this unique moment in
history that is ripe for social and ecological transformation.

Acknowledgments
I am grateful to lands and waters across California and Palestine which have inspired the writing of
this article. I additionally thank Mia Karisa Dawson and Kaleb Germinaro, as well as the anonym-
ous reviewers, for providing generous feedback on earlier versions of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.

ORCID iD
Christopher C Jadallah https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7766-920X

Notes
1. While I focus on qualitative research in this paper, it is worth noting that these approaches are
not constrained to qualitative research, and in fact are broader paradigms for conducting
research in which a variety of methods can be employed (Cornwall and Jewkes, 1995).
2. Drawing on Wilson (2008), I distinguish between the terms methodology and method.
Whereas methodology refers to the broader orientation or stance informing research,
methods refer to specific tools for data collection and analysis.
3. While these processes are ongoing, Indigenous peoples continue to resist and exceed settler
colonialism (Simpson, 2016).

References
Anderson J, Adey P and Bevan P (2010) Positioning place: Polylogic approaches to research meth-
odology. Qualitative Research 10(5): 589–604.
Archibald JA (2008) Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body, and Spirit.
Vancouver: UBC Press.
Bang (2017) Towards an ethic of decolonial trans-ontologies in sociocultural theories of learning
and development. In: Esmonde I and Booker A (eds) Power and Privilege in the Learning
Sciences: Critical and Sociocultural Theories of Learning. Routledge.
Bang M, Curley L, Kessel A, et al. (2014) Muskrat theories, tobacco in the streets, and living
Chicago as indigenous land. Environmental Education Research 20(1): 37–55.
Bang M and Marin A (2015) Nature-culture constructs in science learning: Human/non-human
agency and intentionality. Journal of Research in Science Teaching 52(4): 530–544.
Bang M and Vossoughi S (2016) Participatory design research and educational justice: Studying
learning and relations within social change making. Cognition and Instruction 34(3): 173–193.
Barad K (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter
and Meaning. Duke University Press.
Jadallah 13

Barakat R (2018) Writing/righting Palestine studies: Settler colonialism, indigenous sovereignty

and resisting the ghost(s) of history. Settler Colonial Studies 8(3): 349–363.
Berger R (2015) Now I see it, now I don’t: Researcher’s position and reflexivity in qualitative
research. Qualitative Research 15(2): 219–234.
Bergland B (2018) The incompatibility of neoliberal university structures and interdisciplinary
knowledge: A feminist slow scholarship critique. Educational Philosophy and Theory
50(11): 1031–1036.
Boveda M and Annamma SA (2023) Beyond making a statement: An intersectional framing of the
power and possibilities of positioning. Educational Researcher 52(5): 306–314.
Brayboy BM, Gough HR, Leonard B, et al. (2012) Reclaiming scholarship: Critical indigenous
research methodologies. In: Lapan SD, Quartaroli MT and Riemer JF (eds) Qualitative
Research: An Introduction to Methods and Designs. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 423–450.
Cajete G (2000) Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence. Santa Fe: Clear Light
Publishers.
Collins PH (1986) Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of black fem-
inist thought. Social Problems 33(6): s14–s32.
Collins PH (1997) Comment on Hekman’s “Truth and method: Feminist standpoint theory revis-
ited”: Where’s the Power? Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 22(2): 375–381.
Cornwall A and Jewkes R (1995) What is participatory research? Social Science and Medicine
41(12): 1667–1676.
Davies B (2023) Positioning and the thick tangles of spacetimemattering. Qualitative Inquiry 29(3-
4): 466–474.
Dwyer SC and Buckle JL (2009) The space between: On being an insider-outsider in qualitative
research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 8(1): 54–63.
Figueroa AM (2014) La Carta de responsibilidad: The problem of departure. In: Paris D and Winn
MT (eds) In Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Inquiry with Youth and Communities.
Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 129–146.
Fine M (1994) Working the hyphens: Reinventing self and other in qualitative research. In: Denzin
NK and Lincoln YS (eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research. Sage Publications, 70–82.
Friedel TL (2011) Looking for learning in all the wrong places: Urban native youths’ cultured
response to western-oriented place-based learning. International Journal of Qualitative
Studies in Education 24(5): 531–546.
Grosfoguel R (2013) The structure of knowledge in westernised universities: Epistemic racism/
sexism and the four genocides/epistemicides. Human Architecture: Journal of the
Sociology of Self-Knowledge 1(1): 73–90.
Gruenewald DA (2003) The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of place. Educational
Researcher 32(4): 3–12.
Halle-Erby K (2022) “Relationships are reality”: Centering relationality to investigate land, indi-
geneity, blackness, and futurity. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education
37(1): 1–18.
Hammersley M and Atkinson P (1983) Ethnography: Principles in Practice. London: Tavistock
Publications.
Haraway D (1988) Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of
partial perspective. Feminist Studies 14(3): 575–599.
Harding S (1991) Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?: Thinking from Women’s Lives. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press.
Hecht M and Nelson T (2022) Getting “really close”: Relational processes between youth, educa-
tors, and more-than-human beings as a unit of analysis. Environmental Education Research
28(9): 1–14.
14 Qualitative Research 0(0)

Israel B, Eng E, Schulz AJ, et al. (2005) Methods in Community-Based Participatory Research for
Health. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Khalidi R (2020) The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and
Resistance, 1917–2017. New York: Metropolitan Books.
Kimmerer RW (2010) The giveaway. In: Moore M and Nelson MP (eds) Moral Ground. San
Antonio: Trinity University Press., 141–145.
Kirkness VJ and Barnhardt R (1991) First nations and higher education: The four R’s—respect,
relevance, reciprocity, responsibility. Journal of American Indian Education 30(3): 1–15.
Krystalli R (2020) When humans become data. In: MacGinty R, Brett R and Vogel B (eds) The
Companion to Peace and Conflict Fieldwork. Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 35–46.
Liboiron M (2021) Pollution is Colonialism. Durham: Duke University Press.
Marin AM (2020) Ambulatory sequences: Ecologies of learning by attending and observing on the
move. Cognition and Instruction 38(3): 281–317.
Martinez DC (2016) “This ain’t the projects”: A researcher’s reflections on the local appropriate-
ness of our research tools. Anthropology & Education Quarterly 47(1): 59–77.
Mason W (2021) Radically slow? Reflections on time, temporality, and pace in engaged scholar-
ship. In: Clift BC, Gore J, Gustafsson S, etal (eds) Temporality in Qualitative Inquiry.
London: Routledge, 142–157.
Massey D (1994) Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
McKittrick K (2020) Dear Science and Other Stories. Durham: Duke University Press.
Meissner SN (2022) Teaching reciprocity: Gifting and land-based ethics in indigenous philosophy.
Teaching Ethics 22(1): 17–37.
Meixi (2022) Towards gentle futures: Co-developing axiological commitments and alliances
among humans and the greater living world at school. Mind, Culture, and Activity 29(4):
1–20.
Merriam SB, Johnson-Bailey J, Lee MY, et al. (2001) Power and positionality: Negotiating insider/
outsider status within and across cultures. International Journal of Lifelong Education 20(5):
405–416.
Merriam SB and Tisdell EJ (2015) Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Museus SD and Wang AC (2022) Refusing neoliberal logics in research design. In: Tachine A and
Nicolazzo Z (eds) Weaving an Otherwise: In-relation Methodological Practice. Sterling: Stylus
Publishing, 15–28.
Nxumalo F, Nayak P and Tuck E (2022) Education and ecological precarity: Pedagogical, curricu-
lar, and conceptual provocations. Curriculum Inquiry 52(2): 97–107.
Paris D and Winn MT (2014) Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with Youth
and Communities. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Patel L (2014) Countering coloniality in educational research: From ownership to answerability.
Educational Studies 50(4): 357–377.
Pico T (2017) Nature Poem. Portland: Tin House Books.
Probst B and Berenson L (2014) The double arrow: How qualitative social work researchers use
reflexivity. Qualitative Social Work 13(6): 813–827.
Puig de la Bellacasa M (2017) Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More than Human Worlds :
University of Minnesota Press.
Reo NJ, Whyte KP, McGregor D, et al. (2017) Factors that support indigenous involvement in
multi-actor environmental stewardship. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous
Peoples 13(2): 58–68.
Rose G (1997) Situating knowledges: Positionality, reflexivities and other tactics. Progress in
Human Geography 21(3): 305–320.
Rowe WE (2014) Positionality. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Action Research 628: 627–628.
Jadallah 15

Salaita S (2016) Inter/nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine. Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press.
San Pedro T and Kinloch V (2017) Toward projects in humanization: Research on co-creating and
sustaining dialogic relationships. American Educational Research Journal 54(15): 373–394.
Schulz P (2021) Recognizing research participants’ fluid positionalities in (post-) conflict zones.
Qualitative Research 21(4): 550–567.
Simard S (2021) Finding the Mother Tree: Uncovering the Wisdom and Intelligence of the Forest.
Penguin Random House.
Simpson LB (2011) Dancing on our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence
and a New Emergence. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing.
Simpson LB (2016) Indigenous resurgence and co-resistance. Critical Ethnic Studies 2(2): 19–34.
Small ML and Calarco JM (2022) Qualitative Literacy: A Guide to Evaluating Ethnographic and
Interview Research. Oakland: University of California Press.
Stewart-Ambo T and Yang KW (2021) Beyond land acknowledgment in settler institutions. Social
Text 39(1): 21–46.
Styres S, Haig-Brown C and Blimkie M (2013) Towards a pedagogy of land: The urban context.
Canadian Journal of Education 36(2): 34–67.
Swaminathan R and Mulvihill TM (2019) Learning to ‘site-see’: Place-reflexivity as a methodo-
logical tool for qualitative researchers. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in
Education 32(8): 982–997.
Tachine A and Nicolazzo Z (2022) Weaving an Otherwise: In-Relations Methodological Practice.
Sterling: Stylus Publishing.
Thapar-Björkert S and Henry M (2004) Reassessing the research relationship: Location, position
and power in fieldwork accounts. International Journal of Social Research Methodology
7(5): 363–381.
Tracy SJ (2010) Qualitative quality: Eight “big-tent” criteria for excellent qualitative research.
Qualitative Inquiry 16(10): 837–851.
Tuan YF (1977) Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Tuck E (2009) Suspending damage: A letter to communities. Harvard Educational Review 79(3):
409–428.
Tuck E and McKenzie M (2015) Place in Research: Theory, Methodology, and Methods. New
York: Routledge.
Tuck E, McKenzie M and McCoy K (2014) Land education: Indigenous, post-colonial, and decol-
onizing perspectives on place and environmental education research. Environmental
Education Research 20(1): 1–23.
Tuck E and Yang KW (2014) R-words: Refusing research. In: Paris D and Winn MT (eds)
Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with Youth and Communities.
Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 223–248.
Tynan L (2021) What is relationality? Indigenous knowledges, practices and responsibilities with
kin. Cultural Geographies 28: 597–610.
Tzou CT and Bell P (2012) The role of borders in environmental education: Positioning, power and
marginality. Ethnography and Education 7(2): 265–282.
Wainwright D (1997) Can sociological research be qualitative, critical and valid? The Qualitative
Report 3(2): 1–17.
Wallerstein N and Duran B (2003) The theoretical, historical, and practice roots of CBPR. In:
Minkler M and Wallerstein N (eds) Community-Based Participatory Research in Health.
Jossey-Bass, 25–46.
Whyte WF (1991) Participatory Action Research. Newbury Park: Sage Research Methods.
16 Qualitative Research 0(0)

Wilson S (2008) Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Black Point: Fernwood
Publishing.
Wolfinger NH (2002) On writing fieldnotes: Collection strategies and background expectancies.
Qualitative Research 2(1): 85–93.
Wölfle Hazard C (2022) Underflows: Queer Trans Ecologies and River Justice. Seattle: University
of Washington Press.
Yeh ET and Bryan J (2015) Indigeneity.The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology. London:
Routledge.

Author biography
Christopher Jadallah is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Justice in Education at the
UCLA School of Education & Information Studies.