Lost in Complexity? Researching the Role of Socio-Spatial Ascriptions in the Process of Peripheralization

Abstract

In our chapter, we aim to discuss a number of methodological and conceptual decisions that we necessarily had (and still have) to take in a case study on peripheralization. In a project on ‘Discourse and practices in shrinking regions’, we raise the question of how discourses of shrinkage, peripheralization and (spatial) marginalization¹ become part of people’s actual lives. Basically, this includes the question of how a discourse can become part of individual interpretation and appropriation of social reality, individual action and decision-making, and how this can be investigated without (unwillingly) reifying hegemonic discourses and the socio-spatial realities they produce. Researchers involved in empirical research, of course, know the pitfalls that emerge from being embedded in social practice. Researchers have increasingly become aware of situated knowledge and positionalities (Haraway 1991, Merrifield 1995, Bondi 1997, Tadaki et al. 2011), and feminist and critical scholars in particular have emphasized the necessity of being reflexive and, therefore, have called for ‘transparent reflexivity’ (Rose 1997: 311). Keeping in mind this performative understanding of research as social practice, we develop a circular understanding of peripheralization that culminates in a heuristic model. Based on this, in the main section we discuss some findings from our empirical study that demonstrate the complexity of interaction in research. This section is followed by a discussion on decisions and conditions of researching peripheralization.