Exploring Human Geography

3 Things I Know for Certain About Human Geography Research:

Throughout the duration of this Applied Human Geography course, I have learned many things that I will take with me and use in the future.  To start, I would like to discuss what qualitative research is.  This course has given me the opportunity to truly understand what qualitative research is in comparison to quantitative research.  Qualitative research is used to investigate and study the experiences that people have in regards to space.  It “is concerned with elucidating human environments and human experiences” (Hay, 2016, p.5).  Unlike quantitative methods, qualitative research requires the researcher to understand in depth why they are receiving the answers they are.  A qualitative research method that shows this would be in depth interviews with individuals.  I am also able to understand when it is most appropriate to conduct qualitative research.  As a researcher, it is important to understand when and why to use specific research methods.

Secondly, I would like to discuss the ethics criteria that I have learned about throughout this course.  Qualitative research of any kind requires an ethics approval from whatever institution or organization that a researcher is performing for.  An ethics approval ensures that both the participant and researchers involved will be treated with respect and conforming to the same guidelines.  An ethics approval typically states that the participant is free to answer when he/she feels comfortable and in a way that they choose.  For this course, I was required to get an ethics approval before interviewing a professor here at the university.  The rules of this ethics outline stated that the professor was to answer questions by her own free will, she did not have to answer any question she felt uncomfortable with, and that the interview would be no longer than 15 minutes unless she chooses otherwise.  

Finally, the last thing I learned that I would like to discuss is my invisible backpack.  This is a term used to define a researcher’s influence within a research project.  For example, in class, we learned about researchers travelling to less fortunate communities where they exhibit privileges that those community members might not even have access to.  Being able to travel to these communities and then return home is an aspect of an invisible backpack.  This ties in with critical reflexivity because critical reflexivity ensures that researchers put themselves completely aside for the greater good of the research project.  Critical reflexivity requires one to be unbiased and ethical while conducting research.  

3 Things I am Still Confused By:

While learning many new things, it has become apparent that there are many things I am still confused by.  To start, I will discuss organizing information.  During the course, we were assigned to code our sources used for the digital storytelling project.  At first, I thought that we would create a legend of words and we would highlight them where they are used in the source.  I learned that instead of only highlighting the word, we were to highlight the section of the text that the word was referring to (Hay, 2016, p.377).  Now, I am still confused on how to pick out this information.  I am unsure of how to classify which information is more important than others when they both regard the same word.  

Secondly, another thing I am still confused about has to do with ethical consideration.  I am aware that all research conducted must be ethically approved prior to starting.  However, I am unable to determine what is ethical and what is not ethical in some situations.  In class, we watched a research video starring Agafia Lykov, a woman living alone in the Siberian mountains.  The research team went in to conduct their research and at first, I thought they were very respectful.  They did not enter her home or ask her for anything.  However, I learned later on in class that they were not very ethical.  I must evaluate ethical considerations better in the future.  

Lastly, I will discuss developing a research question.  An issue that became apparent to me when we began creating our digital storytelling projects.  Our groups were asked to first create a research question and then answer it through a digital storytelling process.  I struggled while making this question because I did not want to be too specific but I also did not want to be too vague (Hay, 2016, p.101).  Even now, it is difficult to conduct research questions for the same reasons.  

3 Things I Know for Certain About Me as a Human Geographic Researcher:

Personally, I have found out many things about myself through this course.  First, I have found out that I prefer and work more strongly while conducting qualitative research rather than quantitative.  I have developed my understanding for the use of qualitative research methods much easier than I have ever experienced with quantitative methods.  Secondly, I have determined that my passions lay within environmental geography.  After learning about economic geography through my digital storytelling project, I have come to realize this is not my strong suit and environmental geography is.  Lastly, I know for certain that I would be a great asset to research projects investigating how people live in smaller communities.  I have learned that I am resilient and a very hard worker who communicates well when doing research.  Because of this, a research project like this would be perfect for me.   

3 Areas I Need to Spend Time Developing/Learning in Order to Feel More Confident in My Skills:

There are some things that I acknowledge I must improve on before conducting any real qualitative research.  First, I will discuss coding again.  Although I am very good at organizing a method of coding, I often have trouble following it.  Next, I would like to improve my listening skills in regards to interviewing.  I have found that I am nervous during interviews and I tend to focus on getting the questions out which interferes with me actually hearing what my participant is saying.  The textbook suggests that when everyone involved feels at ease, data collected is more insightful (Hay, 2016, p.160).  So, I must work on my research nerves.  Lastly, I would also like to improve my research techniques in order to ensure rigour (Hay, 2016, p.125).  I ran into this issue while conducting an interview for my digital storytelling project.  I had conducted the interview and then tried to quote what my participant had said, however, I did not quote word for word which made my data incorrect/irrelevant.  

References

It is awesome you were able to figure out your likes and dislikes of human geography as you mentioned you didn't enjoy economic geography. I don't necessarily like economic geography as well but I think it is essential that an individual learns about their likes and dislikes within a certain topic or how else would we ever know.

I also agree with you with the troubles of coding because it was confusing for me too. You said that you are unsure how to "classify which information is more important than others when they both regard the same word". This is something I relate too and I discussed something similar in my final blog. I had some trouble figuring out what words would help me code the best for any research project based on a single topic. I know this coding would be practical for future uses but I would need more practice to fully understand coding. I do not plan to individually do any research projects outside of school projects so I am not sure if coding is something I specifically would use outside of university.

We did it! We are at the end of the semester! I’m sure none of us expected our university careers to end up like this, but I’m happy that I had the opportunity to interact with you all virtually. As an International Development Student with an area of emphasis on Environment and Development, I’ve taken my fair share of geography classes. However, these classes do not spend much time truly speaking to the human component of geography. I’ve found it very interesting to learn about the different ways that humans interact with their environment, and the ways in which the environment can impact human cultures, and vice versa. 

These three things I know for certain about human geography research…

1. The importance of ethical research. Throughout the course of this semester, I have gained a better understanding of research ethics. I had no idea the extent to which researchers have to go through in order to ensure their work is ethical. However, I am happy to know that things such as the CORE tutorial exist so that ethical research can take place. Any time that researchers are dealing with human subjects or material, whether in the context of geography or not, it is necessary to make sure that the correct ethical procedures are being taken, in order to reduce and minimize the potential for risk (Hooykas, 2021).

2. The role of subjectivity, intersubjectivity and objectivity. While I have come across the concept of ‘invisible backpacks’ before, I appreciated its presence in the course material of this class. I feel as though it is so essential for researchers to understand and acknowledge their own biases and judgements before going ahead with research (Hooykas, 2021).

3. The importance of valid, peer - reviewed sources. The Internet is so full of information that it can often be difficult and complex to find accurate, peer - reviewed sources. It is so easy to Google search something and find a website that tells you everything you need to know about a topic. However, most of these sites are not peer - reviewed, academic sources, and I’ve come to realize the importance of using research that comes from valid, academically sourced sites.

These three things I am still confused by…

1. Coding: I found this unit quite challenging and would say that I still do not fully understand the concept yet. I think that I personally could have spent more time digging into the subject material and developing my understanding of the concept. I feel as though coding is a very important part of human geography and so I hope to continue to develop my understanding of it to avoid confusion in the future.

2. Interviews: I also feel as though I am still a little confused about the differences between structured, semistructured and unstructured interviews (Hooykas, 2021). However, I think that a lot of clarity could come from this should I actively participate in an interview process. I think that the interview process is something that is always a little bit confusing until you actually participate in it.

3. Triangulation: I found this concept a bit difficult to grasp and I think that I still have a lot to learn about it. Moving ahead with my geographic research, I hope to gain a deeper understanding of what exactly triangulation is and how it is used.

These three things I know for certain about me as a human geographic researcher…

1. I much prefer qualitative research to quantitative. I have known since about Grade 10 that I am not a fan of hard sciences. While I appreciate and acknowledge its merit, I personally do not feel as though I am very good at 1) developing quantitative data or 2) understanding it. I much prefer learning about the qualitative stories of a person or situation, rather than analyzing hard data.

2. I’ve also learned about my own biases. Whether these be from my academic or personal background, throughout the course of this semester, I feel as though I have a better understanding of what might be in my ‘invisible backpack.’ This will help me in the future as I continue with any geographic research, as I will have a better understanding of my biases and how they might affect my studies.

3. I’ve also learned more about myself in the context of how well I work with a group, especially a research driven group. I definitely had difficulties navigating this aspect this semester, given the online formatting. Despite this, I feel as though I have a deeper understanding of how I work within a group, in terms of not only how I contribute, but my downfalls as well.

These three areas I need to spend time developing/ learning in order to feel more confident in my skills…

1. Interviews: In a few of my other classes I have had the opportunity to directly participate in research interviews. Through this process as well as through the information I gained about interview processes through Hays’ readings, I feel as though I have a pretty good theoretical understanding of how to properly conduct an interview. However, I feel as though I could stand to benefit from participating in more interviews first hand. A theoretical understanding of the interview process is important and helps in terms of formatting and structuring a conversation, but I think socially, as a researcher, I could stand to gain from more experience (Hays, 2016).

2. Coding: As mentioned earlier, I still have some confusion when it comes to coding. I feel as though I still have not fully grasped the concept and I think that more experience in the field would help me to develop my skills as a researcher. With something technical like coding, I think that it requires practice rather than simply studying a textbook, so I hope that I have an opportunity in the future to work on my coding abilities.

3. One last thing that I hope to work on more in the future is my ability to find valid sources of information. I think that this is a constant challenge for university students, but with the Internet, valid, peer - reviewed sources are more available and accessible than ever! I think that this course helped me to better understand how to properly search for these articles, and my work on the annotated bibliography for my digital storytelling project helped me gain a better understanding of the field.

While I wish I could have spent this semester in person, I appreciated communicating with you all via the blogs, and wish you all the best in your future projects! 

Thanks!

April

References:

Hay, I. (2016). Qualitative Research Methods in Human Geography, Toronto. Oxford University Press.

I am also glad we had the opportunity to interact with everyone through this blog-style discussion. It was a refreshing way of talking to each other during this pandemic where things are always a little complicated.

It was interesting to read about your confusing topics in this course because mine were very similar. I also had some trouble trying to figure out coding and interviews. For coding, it seems useful for future use but I had some troubles knowing what words would be best to code and be more useful for my research. I also agree about your point on interviews that they are "a little bit confusing until you actually participate in it". As this course teaches us how to interview, it is hard to think about applying it and how I would go about doing that.

It is cool you were able to learn how well you work in a research group environment. This is something I didn't even think about when writing my last blog, but I am glad I was able to stop and think about my individual experience as well. For myself, I feel like I work well with groups but sometimes I prefer to do individual projects. It was interesting to read your blog in that sense because it gave me a new perspective on the idea of researching in a group environment.

I hope you have a great rest of this semester and a great summer as well!

I found an article from the CTV News website that caught my eye. The title of the article is Mi'kmaw tiny-home builders hoping to tackle Indigenous housing crisis. The article is about Lloyd Augustine and his nephew Robert building tiny homes, usually 10 feet by 26 feet, for Indigenous people to have as their homes in their overcrowded communities in New Brunswick and across other parts of Canada. The tiny homes can take up to eight to twelve weeks to build, but with larger crews, size and minimal set backs a tiny home can be built in just two to three weeks. The tiny homes are priced around $50,000 to $65,000, depending on size and design. Lloyd and Robert come from Esgenoôpetitj First Nations in New Brunswick, and have noticed that many families are packed into homes and some people are left with just a tent as a home. They wanted to make a difference and their solution is the tiny homes project they have started. 

(Photo from CTV NEWS)

When relating this to course material a reading from Brown (2006) states that there are five criteria that test the evaluation of validity when reviewing literature; Purpose, scope, authority, audience and format. 

To start the purpose of this article would be to spread awareness of the overcrowded communities and the solution that is being presented at this point would address the scope of the matter. 

The authority comes from the sources within the article and whether they are creditable or not. A source the article uses is another CTV News article that discusses the issue of overcrowding in Indigenous communities and that article also references the United Nations statistics. My article also references the 2016 statistics of Canada reports discussing two out of five Indigenous peoples live in an over crowded home and one in ten live in a home with one bathroom. The article also has comments from Lloyd and Robert from a web interview conducted to complete the project. 

Furthermore the audience for the article would be those of the overcrowded communities and anyone else interested in learning how to help or curious readers.

I really enjoyed reading your blog this week. I think it's super interesting that you choose to do an analysis of a housing crisis article as I've been thinking recently about the rising house prices rising in Ontario as well. I thought it was really cool how you went through purpose, scope, authority, audience and format. I would definitely say that this is a use of triangulation which is taking 3 different types of sources and if they are all saying the same thing then therefore it's right (Hooykaas, 2021). With the Statistics Canada data, United Nations data, and Lloyd Augustine and Robert themselves it all creates a triangle. I’m curious to know if you agree or not?

I also agree that the audience is for anyone who is looking to learn more about this or educating others. The article mentions some eye opening facts that create a great way to educate people on this Indigenous housing crisis that spans across Canada. Did you have any previous knowledge around this topic before this article?

I look forward to reading more of your posts!

References:

Hi everyone!

For this week’s blog, I decided to put my focus on COVID-19 and inequality articles since that is my main focus for my role in the digital storytelling project. To start, this pandemic has impacted social geography significantly and using coding can help depict the meaningful quotes in an article and from there we can decide their significance. Another of our group’s goals is to focus on highlighting the effects that social geography has on racial injustice. Social geography has effects on both the topics of racial injustice and COVID-19 in various ways and is an extremely current example of why studying social geography can be so important as we try to figure out “What is social geography?”. The first article I am going to be coding is Geographies of the COVID-19 pandemic and the second is How segregation leads to racist voting by whites.

What coding did I choose and why?

I decided to use deductive coding because when looking through these sources I knew I would be looking for similar themes throughout them. Using this method, I would be able to make a connection between the themes in the sources I was going to use as well. From there, I decided to use a flat coding frame. It was mentioned that this method can “slow down the decision- making” (Hooykaas, Week 8, 2021). Although it may slow down the research, for me I find it nicer to find the most prevalent themes then from there, find the sub-topics of those and what are most important afterwards.

My code themes:

COVID-19 (blue)

Society (pink)

Communities (purple)

Space (green)

Segregation (yellow)

I have also attached an image to demonstrate how these codes were implemented and how I used them.

Applying this these themes to our assignment:

These themes will be applied in our assignment as I and another group member will be discussing the impacts social geography has on our current world. The other half of our group are also discussing the past and future impacts that social geography has had on our world as well. For example, COVID-19 will be my main topic and how many changes we have seen in our society and socially through a geographical lens. By using these themes we will be able to focus on our main goal which is to give a perspective into the current happenings of social geography.

References

Enos, R. (2017, November 28). How segregation leads to racist voting by whites. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/11/28/16707438/social-geography-trump-rise-segregation-psychology-racism

Hooykaas, (2021). Week 8, Coding

Great post! As I was reading through, I was able to understand why you chose to select deductive and flat coding for your work. Studying COVID-19 through geographical lenses will surely be an interesting task. We have seen several changes to our society in the past year or so, I’m sure the results of your research assignment will be display your goal. I’m very interested to know what else will you be looking at for your research assignment? 

Thank you for the feedback! I am glad you think that our groups topics will be great for the research assignment. Most specifically, for my part of the project ill be looking into how COVID-19 has created social inequalities from a geographical perspective. As this is such a current topic, I’m sure you have even had personal experiences how the pandemic has impacted your views of social geography. I’m interested to know if you have thought about the changes and inequalities that COVID-19 has made geographically? 

What is coding? 

“Coding usually starts with a summary of the text you are examining (called descriptive coding because it forms a summary description of what is in the transcript or the text like an overview”  (Hooykaas 2021) 

“Coding is a process by which researchers structure and interpret qualitative data. When doing discourse analysis, coding serves two primary functions: organization and analysis of source materials“ (Hay 2016, p302)

Basically coding is a term used to describe the sorting out of key words relating to a theme in a piece of writing (or transcript). You then categorizing these words into groups in order to section out/ sort out information.

My Source Codes 

For my digital storytelling assignment my group and I will be discussing historical geography. The two sources I will be coding are both peer reviewed journal articles and are titled:

Late Pleistocene climate drivers of early human migration

And

Speleothem evidence for the greening of the Sahara and its implications for the early human dispersal out of sub-Saharan Africa.

I have used deductive coding in my group research thus far, which means that you begin your work with a predetermined set of themes/codes to be searching for in each of your source materials (Hooykaas 2021). I have used this type of coding  because it seems like a good entry point into the notion of coding. As a beginner it is easier to set out key terms and words that the group can focus on. It retains key elements of our area of study and keeps the search focused and on track. As mentioned in the lecture slides, the one thing to keep in mind about this method of coding is bias. Because you are so focused on the themes already laid out, you might miss out on other key elements to the research by only focusing on a preconceived set of themes. Focusing too heavily on your predetermined themes and working only to prove your own hypothesis could lead you to miss out on beneficial information. 

I have also utilized the hierarchical framing structure for my codes. My hierarchy is essentially based on code specificity to my topic of interest. 

The codes I used are as follows 

“Africa” “Eurasia”—> Pink

“Homo sapiens  Migration” —>Orange 

“Climate Records”—>Blue 

“Vegetated Pathways” —> Green 

                                              (see screenshots below)

Each code title goes from general terms (keywords that show up) to a more specific event that was supposed to have happened and that caused early human migration. The umbrella term being “Africa” / “Eurasia” following that we have “Homo sapiens migration” meaning the migration within Africa and Eurasia. Then following this is “Climate Records” the records are evidence showing that Homo sapiens migration happened, and then more specifically “Vegetated Pathways” are a result of climate change that the records are displaying”. Once again the hierarchy of my codes being general to specific. 

My Project 

If you noticed my two articles were centered around one particular historical event, that being early human migration out of Africa. This is because my group has chosen to explain the essence of historical geography by explaining three major historical events. My event so happened to be Homo sapiens migration out of Africa. To find these specific articles and sources of information I need to start with tailored codes and sort my data into categories in order to choose which one will be the most effective in helping me piece together my part of the assignment. By explaining these historical events we hope to show our audience precisely how historical events have been shaped and formed by physical geomorphological processes. How physical geography heavily impacts human geography/history, that is what this interdisciplinary topic is all about. 

References 

El-Shenawy, M. I., Kim, S.-T., Schwarcza, H. P., Asmeromc, Y., & Polyakc, V. J. (2018, May 15). Speleothem evidence for the greening of the Sahara and its implications for the early human dispersal out of sub-Saharan Africa. Quaternary Science Reviews. https://www-sciencedirect-com.subzero.lib.uoguelph.ca/science/article/pii/S0277379117307436?via%3Dihub  

Hay, Iain. Qualitative Research Methods in Human Geography. Fourth ed., Oxford, 2016

Hooykaas, (2021). Week 8, Coding

Qualitative analysis of interview data: A step-by-step guide for coding/indexing. (2013, May 19). [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRL4PF2u9XA 

I really enjoyed reading your post this week. It was nice that you put the definition of coding and a little description of it to let the reader get an idea about your blog. It was also interesting reading your coding strategies since your focus is historical geography and mine is social geography so I was able to have a glimpse of a different perspective. Your highlighting strategy was great to see because I highlighted individual words rather than whole sentences. Highlighting the whole sentence can help in seeing the bigger picture of any article. I also noticed that you were very specific in the sources you choose. As the textbook mentioned, "Familiarization with your source materials is essential" (Hay, 2016, p.296). This is clearly something you thought about during the coding process, especially since you are focusing on the specific subtopic; Homo sapiens migration out of Africa.

Reading your blog this week put this whole project into another perspective for me. When you focus on one part of geography for so many weeks you can forget that it is such a broad topic and can really be discussed with any topic. This was my favourite thing I noticed when I was reading your blog! I look forward to reading more in the future.

Refrences:

Hay, Iain. Qualitative Research Methods in Human Geography. Fourth ed., Oxford, 2016.

Hi everyone, I hope you have been having a great weekend!

While trying to find a topic that interests me for this blog since we can talk about so many things, I found it challenging. Although I am interested in human geography and to be more specific, cultural or social geography, doing research is sort of uninteresting to me. Although I would dislike researching the future, learning about things such as power, subjectivity, and ethics has been interesting. This course has helped me in the sense that I am more in touch with what I would like to do in the future. Even though I dislike doing research, as a university student I am still doing it extremely often. GEOG*2260 has helped me identify key aspects while I’m researching such as looking for reliable sources, or even if an article/journal is good enough to use in a project. Other than this though doing research like creating questionnaires, interviews, etc seems something I would very much not want to do.

As I mentioned above, I am still interested in things such as power, subjectivity, and ethics. This part of the course is most interesting to me because it is more personal. Rather than research methods or research design which may be less abstract. One thing that stuck out to me in this chapter was ethical and anonymous questionnaires or surveys. It was cited that “the web service, for example, may track IP [Internet Protocol] addresses and hence enable identification of participants” (Hay, 2016, p. 33). In a world where the internet and social media websites are in our everyday use, we might not consider all of the ethical considerations of anonymity. For me, I never thought about any problems in doing an anonymous survey online but it is evident there are ethical dilemmas to consider. It is hard to know how to prevent this dilemma as many students and researchers must resort to the internet, especially in a pandemic. This ties into the idea of critical reflexivity as well which can be defined by thinking more critically about your research and your values towards it. Although I may not like doing research too much, I know that certain things such as critical reflexivity and ethics are extremely important. Things like ethics and subjectivity are also important outside of research so learning about them is interesting to me in that way as well.

Overall, this course has had some things I thoroughly enjoyed learning about and some things that are not as fun for me. Being able to put all of the things we have learnt so far and put them towards our storytelling project has been the best part for me. I look forward to learning more in this class and seeing where that takes me.

References

I appreciate your honesty in your post and also find this week’s topic challenging to tackle, there are too many interesting topics that we have discussed in class to pick only one. I share your interest in cultural geography and love to see how physical geographic processes play a part in the shaping of cultures around the world. I also appreciate your honesty about research work not being something that interests you entirely and I can definitely understand why that would be, this class also helped me narrow down my interests in the field of geography and helped me to make some important decisions regarding which path to take in the future. 

What exactly is it about research that turns you away from it? I would love to see if we have similar opinions.

Great post :)

So far this course has far exceeded my expectations, it has taught me so many transferable, practical skills that will be useful as I progress further in my career as a geographer or in any other field of research. It is very difficult to pick one thing that resonated with me because everything combined together has been such an eye opening learning experience. 

If I were to choose one thing it would be the value and importance of a good interview. Last week we discussed the structure of interviews and what a professional one looks like. I did not realize that there is essentially a whole science behind conducting a successful interview, as I progressed through the textbook chapter I was more and more amazed at all the information I did not know. An interview is more than a conversation, it is a portal into someone else’s reality, seeing the world as they do. 

There are many different kinds of interviews, some with grief stricken inhabitants of remote parts of the world and some with established authors and academics. My above statements apply to all sorts of interview types. Thus far in the course the interviews we have discussed and watched short films about have been more of the ‘oral history’ (Hooykaas 2021, Week 6) type and have been dealing with case studies. This has been the most interesting aspect of the course thus far for me as you can directly apply geographic, environmental, and economic situations we learn about in classes to real people and listen to how these situations affect their daily lives. This information is so pure and powerful that simply writing papers or textbooks about it dulls the impact of the situation, whereas in a video/ interview format you feel as though you are having a conversation with that person and feel a more human connection to the situation. Interviews are such an important piece of qualitative research and hold such a large impact when trying to prove a case to any form of higher power or even the general public. This is why documentaries are so influential and impactful as well, they are easily digested by almost everyone and provide an audio visual representation of a crisis or a situation in a short amount of time. If a picture is worth a thousand words then a video must be many more. 

One of my favorite interviewers is Michael Parkinson, he is a British interviewer and TV personality. What I love about his style of interviewing is he simply listens and waits for the interviewee to fully answer the question with no interruption. He is light hearted, asks thought out engaging questions and makes small jokes when appropriate to put the guest at ease. Unlike many TV hosts/ personalities he gives the guest space to talk and communicate their thoughts and feelings effectively. I have attached below interview he conducted with Jacob Bronowski the scientist, author, and very interesting person. 

An interview is almost like an interrogation and the most effective interrogators build trust with their subjects (according to John Le Carré the author and ex British secret service operative, he said this in an interview I will link below in the reference section if you are interested)

I would love to know more about documentary filmmaking and all the behind the scenes preparation that goes along with it, as well as more in depth analysis of all the various types of interviews and how the outcomes change depending on each style. Physical geography fascinates me but when you combine it with human geographies and add an ethnographic element in there that’s when I am really engaged and my interest peaks. I really hope we learn more about particular groups around the world and listen to more case studies similar to the ones we have already discussed, they are absolutely fascinating to me. 

References

BBC Radio 3. (2013, September 13). John le Carre filmed interview on BBC Radio 3 Night Waves at London’s Royal College of Music. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoSdtgTWPK8

I really enjoyed reading your post this week! For me, it was hard to pick a topic but it seems like you picked one that interested you. I have the same view as you where I did not realize how much goes into a structured interview and what rules researchers should follow to make sure everything is ethical and respectful.

Throughout your post, you mentioned that you had a favourite interviewer such as Michael Parkinson (who I never have heard of) but he sounds enjoyable and humble. I also watched a little bit of the video you linked to your blog. I agree with you in the fact that he is light-hearted and carries himself in a way that makes the guest comfortable. These are extremely important when conducting an interview to make sure the interviewee does not feel uneasy. It seems you are super interested in research such as interviewing people, which is awesome. I am interested in physical geography as well but it would be hard for me to make it a hobby or career in researching it. Although research studies are not as fun for me, I am interested in learning about case studies about groups around the world as you mentioned.

For our digital storytelling project my group is focusing on the topic of rural geography. When we asked ourselves, “what is rural geography?” many ideas came to mind. One that really stood out to me in particular was the focus on Canada’s Indigenous communities and the struggles they endure living in rural settings. I would want to focus on land rights, as well as access to food, education, and healthcare in Indigenous communities. If I could interview anyone, I would want to go back to before Thelma passed away so I could ask her questions about rural geography with a focus on Indigenous communities as I believe she is a major key thinker in regards to rural geography. Thelma was the first Indigenous and Metis person to be appointed to Canadian Senate, she worked very hard in fighting for Indigenous rights, helping many communities across Canada. Before interviewing Thelma, I would want to ensure I follow all ethical considerations such as asking for her consent to ask her questions and potentially share her answers with others, offer the option to not answer any questions etc. The following are the questions I would ask:

1. What does rural geography mean to you and how would you say it has affected your life? 

This question will help to provide first hand experience with rural geography from a key thinker in the field, by having her define rural geography, it may help us in answering our research question more accurately. 

2. What influenced you to get involved in the political side of rural geography and run for senate? 

Since Thelma was the first Indigenous and Metis person to be appointed to senate, it is fair to assume that she is an inspiration to many. By asking this question, we can establish the journey it took for her to reach this accomplishment and why she herself finds it important.

3. How have your past life experiences helped to influence your role in the Canadian Senate? 

This question will give some insight on Thelma’s personal life. I think it is important to have primary resources in all research, so by having Thelma account any struggles she faced living in an Indigenous rural community, we can use them to build our foundation for our research question. 

4. Do you personally believe that Canada is doing its job in providing Indigenous communities with basic human needs? 

In our research, we focused on the struggles faced in rural communities when it comes to things such as access to food, education, and healthcare. The information we had gathered came from online sources so I think it would be important and interesting to see the perspective of not only someone who may have faced these struggles, but is now helping to assist these communities. 

5. If you could change one thing in the Canadian Government, what would it be and why?

We are always looking for solutions to better the lives of the individuals living in rural communities, so I think by asking this question, we can get a better understanding of what the Canadian Government is doing about the situation and what the weakest point it so we can find resources to help. 

Summary 

Why these questions? I chose to ask Thelma these specific questions for a number of reasons. First, I think it is important to have primary resources in your research. As Thelma has experienced rural geography struggles in her life, as well as fought for Indigenous communities in the Canadian Government, I think she would have a lot of first-hand experiences that would be extremely detailed and helpful for our research. I also chose these questions as I wanted to give Thelma a chance to voice her personal opinion (if she is comfortable doing so) so we can focus on how to better these communities. By using methods highlighted in our textbook, I can ensure that this structured interviewed is conducted properly and ethically, making sure it flows well, uses different research techniques such as qualitative research and follows proper ethical considerations (Hay, 2016). 

References

Government of Canada; Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada. (2019, May 31). Indigenous History-Makers. Retrieved from https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1559226684295/1559226709198

I enjoyed reading about your interviewee. Thelma seems like a great candidate for your rural geography questions on Indigenous communities and an exceedingly intelligent person. Your questions in my opinion were all great, and I would ask her similar questions if I would have had the chance as well. Your questions all are open in the sense she can elaborate as much as one would want with the questions asked and maybe feel less pressure that way. I liked how you asked more specific questions on Indigenous communities as well, especially since Thelma was hugely knowledgeable in that area so she would be very suited to answer these. Even as you mentioned, Thelma has first-hand knowledge about that topic so even on top of her studying it she will have her own experiences.

Thinking about what you could improve about these questions is hard because I thought you did a great job. For question 4, maybe asking "Do you personally believe that Canada is doing its job in providing Indigenous communities with basic human needs, and what do they need to change to improve it?" just to let her elaborate on it more and give her opinion on what needs to change. Overall, all your questions were great when reading them and asking deeper questions that can't be answered with just a yes or no is excellent.

Hi Everyone,

My post this week is going to answer the prompt a bit differently than maybe how it’s supposed to be answered.

The short of it is - I don’t want to become a researcher. I have no interest in doing strictly research as part of my career, and therefore I don’t see myself becoming a researcher in 10 years. So essentially that’s my answer to answer the official prompt of this week; there is no light to shine upon “me” as a researcher.

You may be wondering why I am in GEOG*2260 in the first place. A class focusing on research process, methodological issues, and techniques and I don’t even want to do research in the future. I will have to admit, I was pretty sure that I didn’t want to do research before taking this class, but in the first few weeks of learning the hurdles one has to take before even getting to what they want to research, and that many of those hurdles remain throughout the entire process, it has made me surer that research is not something for me. However, this does not mean I don’t understand the purpose of the hurdles and their importance. Nor does it mean I don’t understand the benefits of knowing how research is done and the processes involved, because those can potentially be beneficial for other paths and careers. You never know where life will take you though, and this post could be one big lie and I end up doing research; but I’ll give you a couple reasons why I don’t want to do research or be a researcher.

Frankly, much of what I have learned/heard about what being a researcher entails sounds like a huge pain in the butt. For example, when learning about research ethics and the clearance, scope, and all the steps that are required (and how each research project can have vastly different steps and requirements) (Hooykaas, 2021) I think about how I’d rather not deal with any of that because it sounds annoying to try to do. Like, I understand the importance of all the steps and councils for research ethics, but I’d rather not deal with it. The actual research process is also something that doesn’t sound fun to do and has been something that I have not enjoyed in the past when doing basic research projects in past classes. Professor Hooykaas also mentioned in Thursday, February 4th class that getting your research project published is also a potentially difficult process that can take multiple years. Generally, all the steps involved for a research project to be cleared and to actually be done is too much effort for me to justify having my last name on a paper that likely won’t be seen by very many people. I would be interested to hear whether my perspective makes sense to any of you.

Anyway, thats my post. Thanks for reading.

References:

Although your post was different than expected, I still really enjoyed reading it. It makes sense to me and is super relatable. Before starting the blog prompt this week I was feeling the same as you. Being a researcher seems like it can be a "huge pain in the butt" like you mentioned which is why it seems unappealing for me. I think about what I would like to do in the future and what that job would entail. For example, I've been considering going to teachers college after my undergrad. This career would prompt me to question things and how I could improve but maybe not a whole research project. All of this also ties into how I perceive the word research or researcher. When the word research is said, my mind often goes to things like sciences (chemistry, biology, psychology, etc) which I have often been uninterested in. In the future, if a research opportunity came up and it was something you were super passionate about do you think that would change your perspective on the process? I was questioning myself as well and if it would change my mind on the research process.

Surviving in the Siberian Wilderness tells the story of Agafia Lykov, a 70 year old woman who has lived and survived in the wilderness of the Siberian Taiga for her whole life. Her family was part of an ultra orthodox sect of christianity that exists scarcely around the world today. In 1936, her family feared the threat of oppression, and her father decided to move the family into the Siberian Taiga. Agafia was born in 1944, and for 40 years her family lived isolated from the world in the Siberian wilderness, despite the harsh conditions and weather. In 1978 however, a group of geologists spotted their farm from a helicopter flying above, and decided to hike in to ‘discover’ and meet the isolated family. Shortly after one of these visits, the three oldest children died from what they presumed to be pneumonia or another disease brought in by the geologists. Agafia’s mother and father died a few years later. Since then, Agafia has lived and survived alone, save for a former geologist named Yerofei, who moved onto the farm 16 years before the documentary took place.

In 2013, a group of filmmakers set out to meet Agafia and make a documentary about her and her life. The primary research techniques that were employed were that of an interview and case study. Throughout their stay, the filmmakers asked Agafia questions about her daily life, her family, religion and thoughts on the outside world. Through these questions, the documentary makers gained a deeper understanding of what life in the Taiga was really like, an provided an example for other communities that live similar lifestyles.

The invisible Backpack of the documentary filmmaker, which I would argue is not directly identified, is important to think about when analyzing the research methods and techniques. Understanding the positionality and reasoning for conducting a documentary of Agafia and her life provides a valuable perspective. It could be argued that through this interview, we not only learned about isolated life in the Taiga, but gained a interesting look at the relationship between humans and the environment.

Going into the making of this documentary, I think that it would have been important and necessary for the filmmakers to first consider the ethical component that goes into a case study and interview process such as this one. Until the team of geologists discovered Agafia’s families settlement in the late 70’s, the family had lived isolated from any other human contact, unaware of worldly news or politics, even including the event of WWII. The shock that would come from meeting other humans and hearing of the world that has gone on outside of her knowledge would surely come as a shock, especially given the technological advancements that have come in the last 70 years. Disturbing her isolated life and introducing her to these new concepts, events and inventions could have adverse psychological effects, and so weighing the risks vs the benefits before committing to the study would be an important consideration.

If I were to have had the opportunity to create a documentary about Agafia, her family and her story, I would first have to take into account my positionality and my ‘Invisible Backpack.’ I think that it would be important to remember the purpose of which I am interviewing Agafia, which would be to share her story with the world, so that viewers might gain a better understanding of the relationship between humans and nature, and perhaps even the role that industrial society and technology has within that relationship.

Going in, an important ethical consideration that the team of geologists in the late 70s might not have considered is the possibility of bringing disease into the community that Agafia and Yerofei have not been exposed to. As an individual who has grown up surrounded by people and exposed to all sorts of bacteria and virus, I have built up an immune system to most common germs. However, Agafia has been isolated for 70 years, and therefore does not have an immune system as resilient as mine might be. As a result, I might make sure that I am vaccinated from most common viruses, and make sure that the benefits that I would gain from the study outweigh the risks.

What do you think are important ethical considerations to keep in mind when approaching a study such as this one? Do you think it unethical that these filmmakers engaged with Agafia or do you think it was necessary to tell her story?

It was interesting that you pointed out the relationship between humans and the environment because I had not thought about that while watching the documentary. I agree and think back to when Agafia mentioned that there are too many cars in general now. Going from such a remote area to seeing how much the world has changed would be overwhelming, specifically how we have changed the environment. You mentioned something similar to this and how new news could come with adverse psychological effects. As a researcher, we have to consider all ethical impacts whether they are psychological, physical, etc.

I also agree that the geologists that came to visit them in the 1970s may not have considered the repercussions of seeing someone who has not been exposed to the same pathogens as them would go over. This is an extremely crucial ethical consideration that I would consider before doing this research myself. As you mentioned, getting vaccinated would be the first step in ensuring Agafia's safety. In today's society, having a Coronavirus vaccine and testing would be of utmost importance before seeing anyone closed off from our everyday pathogens.