Textile-Making as Research Method

Abstract

Textile-making – broadly defined as a practice based on crafts such as sewing, embroidering, appliquéing, knitting, quilting, and weaving – is an arts-based method, which is increasingly used in participatory qualitative research but so far under-explored as an approach in peace and conflict studies. Textile-making is particularly suited for impactful peace and conflict research, as it offers innovative ways to combine fieldwork-based qualitative data generation with the emancipatory, transformative, and therapeutic benefits of art in general and needlework more specifically. Textile-making shares arts-based methods’ ability to explore experiential and practical knowledge by offering nonlinguistic ways of expression. As a visual method, images expressed through needlework diversify the iconographic and iconological analyses of other visual approaches....