Listening to place, practising relationality: Embodying six emergent protocols for collaborative relational geographies

Abstract

There is increasing interest within geography around the composition and interdependence of human and environmental dynamics and relational onto-epistemologies. Such interest prompts us to consider questions around respect, power and collaboration, and how we might enact relations across sometimes vast and incommensurable differences as academics and as/with community members. In this paper, we document six protocols which emerged within the Not Lone Wolf network to enable this careful work: Emplacement, Listening, Weaving, Discomfort, Grieving, and Resting. These protocols are material practices that are mindful of the diversity of stakes, opinions and positionalities we hold, and which enable us to navigate through our relations. This paper argues for the importance of attending to such protocols which can shape the doing(s) of relational geographies. It offers possible orientations for geographers and social scientists to experiment with while doing relational geographies.