Work

Accessing the emotional and intangible: combining family history, collaboration and subjectivity as a methodology

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: How can we get at the intimate worlds of families in the past? This article reflects on a methodology of collaborative critical family history as a way to better understand both what families did in the past and how those histories have been constructed and passed on. Through a collaborative project with family historians and research into my own family, this research project involved a different kind of researcher subjectivity. This article considers how we might use concepts of feeling like, feeling with, and feeling for research participants, both living and dead, to write more ethical histories, and to write histories that are inaccessible through conventional archival methodologies.

Source: Emotions and Society

DOI: 10.1332/26316897y2024d000000027

Author: Laura King

Institution: University of Leeds

Language: English

Topic: Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: Arts and Humanities Research Council

Awards: Living with Dying: Everyday Cultures of Dying within Family Life in Britain, c.1900s-1950s, G1752894399