Addressing the binaries of regional/urban and boundaries of research methodologies in and through ‘slow’ research with women from non-urban communities

Abstract

The paper seeks to illuminate the limiting categorisations and hierarchical relationships between urban versus rural, slow versus fast research and between research methodologies, to reconsider notions of place and re-search (or searching and searching again) in a ‘rural’ Australian context. We illustrate these ideas by first examining the dynamic, productive nature of language and by demonstrating how language can be used to review and resist dominant and conservative beliefs and limiting categories. We also specifically consider how critical discourse analysis can reveal the discursive ‘Othering’ of both ‘the rural’ and women living in rural communities and catalyse a feminist narrative inquiry designed to hear and amplify the voices of a diversity of women living in southwest Queensland and how this seeds case studies crafted to enable women in rural, regional and remote communities to work achieve their storied vision and capacities. The paper finally demonstrates how over time (2019–ongoing), slow re-search processes, supported by relationality and trust, evolved, suggesting that discourse analysis, as analytical activism, can lay the foundations for sustained, engaged and relational re-search designed to expose and address entrenched gendered power imbalances and limiting binaries.