Preparatory participation as method
Reconceptualising pre-fieldwork through embodied and relational practice
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19224654 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sadie id_orcid Rockliffe (corresponding author), Sadie Rockliffe (0009-0001-0572-9955, University of Brighton) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-05-04 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Qualitative Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1468-7941 • E-ISSN: 1741-3109 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/14687941261442152 |
| OpenAlex | W7160074337 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 38 |
This Note proposes the concept of preparatory participation as a way of attending to early relational and embodied engagements that shape qualitative research before and alongside moments typically recognised as fieldwork. Drawing on work undertaken with visually impaired co-participants in blue space environments, it reflects on volunteering, sighted-guide training and open-water safety certification as practices through which methodological sensibilities are cultivated. These engagements are approached not as preliminaries to research but as critical sites of methodological thinking where co-presence, sensory reflexivity and relational ethics are learned through lived practice. Situated within established traditions in ethnography, sensory methodology and critical disability studies, the Note contributes to ongoing methodological conversations by tracing how ethical and epistemological orientations are co-produced through early encounters involving access, risk and interdependence. Rather than proposing a new method, preparatory participation offers a vocabulary for recognising forms of embodied and relational labour that many researchers already undertake, and which preparatory participation helps to bring into methodological focus
Embodied cognition · Mainstream · Narrative · Qualitative research · Reflexivity · Relational theory · Situated · Space (punctuation) · Vocabulary · Disability Rights and Representation · Participatory Visual Research Methods · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics
Sensory Experience as Method
Inclusive Ethnography
When Species Meet
Volunteering and Society in the 21st Century
Feminist, Queer, Crip
Ethnography
Running blind
Tides of Change—Barriers and Facilitators to Beach Accessibility for Older People and People with Disability
Storying disability’s potential
Not just the ramp
The Researched Opinions on Research
Ethnographies of Volunteering
Exploring the Effects of Volunteering on the Social, Mental, and Physical Health and Well-being of Volunteers
Navigating the complexity of qualitative research in postmodern contexts
Critical observational drawing in geography
Walkers with visual-impairments in the British countryside
Misfits
On the Need for Methods Beyond Proceduralism
Provocations for Critical Disability Studies
Experiencing nature with sight impairment
For a Sociology of Flesh and Blood
The Intercorporeal Emergence of Landscape
Disability and Discourses of Mobility and Movement
Fieldwork Embodied
Ethics and the new materialism
Doing Sensory Ethnography
Decolonizing Methodologies
Being affected
Trust and temporality in participatory research
Preliminary field-work
Memory in our body
Beyond the senses
| Highly cited | No |
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