Treading carefully through tomatoes: Embodying a gentle methodological approach

Abstract

Though feminist scholars have long advocated reflexivity in geographical research, the multifaceted practices of care that gently shape (and take shape within) fieldwork encounters are often tidied out of academic accounts. By foregrounding moments of embodied gentleness in research into human–plant relationships, this paper asks what a gentle methodological approach might look, and importantly, feel like. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork exploring gardeners' everyday activities and activisms with seeds and plants, I examine moments that are quiet, slow, tender, and unobtrusive to examine how research might be rendered gently. Building on feminist scholarship on bodies, slowness, and reciprocity, I argue gentleness is a necessary, if under-acknowledged, dimension of interpersonal and more-than-human encounters. It requires embodied reflexivity and an active sensitivity to entanglements of care, emotion, and multisensoriality. Gentleness can be implicit, purposeful, or tactical, and it entails complexities and contradictions that must be unpicked. A gentle methodological approach can, however, hold particular utility for exposing and theorising under-acknowledged forms of care-full political and environmental action, which though light-touch are nonetheless significant.