Speculative methodological subjects

• Published in: International journal of social research methodology Vol. 27; no. 6; pp. 675 - 691
• Main Authors: Koro, Mirka, Vasquez, Anani, Wells, Timothy, Vitrukh, Mariia, Sandoval, Jorge
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 01.11.2024; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Discourses; Experiments; Future; Imagination; methodological subject; Qualitative research; radical imagination; Research methodology; Researcher subject relations; scenario building; Speculative approaches
• ISSN: 1364-5579; 1464-5300
• DOI: 10.1080/13645579.2023.2248832

Times of (post) health crisis, global unrest, and political turmoil, a reliance on conventional methods, which potentially lack radical imagination and future orientation, experimentation, and open-endedness, might not be enough. Furthermore, within the discourses of conventional qualitative inquiry, methodological subjects are often seen as overly pre-determined, singular, and static. In this paper, we approach the conceptual and practical challenges of imagining and creating speculative methodological subjects by asking, how might speculative research, including processes of radical imagination and scenario building, shape qualitative scholars' relationships to the formation of methodological subjects and their politics. By sharing scenario-building examples and experimenting with speculative tasks, we explore methodological possibilities for 'subjects' and their entanglement with the lives of qualitative researchers. While collectively thinking about the methodological subject, we encountered relational, non-stable subjects that crossed bodies, sounds, affects and time-spaces.