Methodological desire lines: Engaging with feminist and anti-racist approaches to researching health and place

Abstract

This interdisciplinary Research Note is a reflection on a community-engaged qualitative research project that sought to integrate feminist and anti-racist principles. This Note reflects on a community-engaged project, Park Perceptions and Racialized Realities, with racialized and underserved communities to examine experiences and health equity in public urban greenspaces in Toronto, Canada. Inspired by the photographs and stories of the residents who participated in the project, the author explores what it means to move off the paths commonly travelled in research, using desire lines as a metaphor for what it means to conduct interdisciplinary research in partnership with communities, tending to both processes and outcomes with care and thought. By unpacking the words, ideas and concepts of other feminist and anti-racist scholars, the author examines the alternate paths sometimes required of qualitative research and the embodied experiences of being both insider and outsider in conducting community-based participatory research.