Dynamic embodied positionalities: The politics of class and nature through a critical ethnography of homelessness

Abstract

Researchers’ subjective positionalities are often presented as explanatory factors in the interpretation and analyses of ethnographic experiences. In geographic and anthropological ethnographies, positionalities are often benignly disclosed to readers under the auspices of being better able to understand specific subjective backgrounds, or the lenses, through which researchers engage with participants, places, and the overall subject matter. While positionality statements have become standard in qualitative research, there is not sustained development of the dynamic nature of positionality as way to better understand, analyze, and theorize through a research project. To contextualize this methodological argument, I draw from ethnographic engagement with a community of individuals facing homelessness who reside in tents and other rudimentary structures in a public municipal park. My own dynamic positionalities are positioned as both a lens through which I understand the “Hillside residents” and also evolving analytical tools that complicate assumed understandings of class and relationships to nature.