Peeling Away the Taken-For-Grantedness of Research Subjectivities: Orienting to the Phenomenological

Abstract

Qualitative research is a multidisciplinary field of practice that acknowledges and values the situatedness and subjectivities of the researcher. Therefore, reflexively accounting for one’s subjectivities is a crucial part of a research report. Less discussed is how subjective understandings are historically, culturally, and socially mediated, often challenging researchers’ abilities to orient themselves critically to this self-reflective undertaking. Phenomenology is a philosophical approach investigating how phenomena such as subjectivity are constituted in experience. This makes phenomenology an essential resource for understanding how complex subjective responses manifest differently depending on one’s orientation to the situation. This paper aims to familiarize qualitative research instructors and learners with a series of phenomenological activities that have proven helpful in disclosing multiple ways subjectivities are historically and contextually mediated, embodied, and technologically modified.