Mindful methodologies: Some limitations and concerns

Abstract

This paper will offer reflections on the ways in which mindfulness has been presented as a potential research methodology in geography. I pick up from previous work that explored the utility of mindfulness to non-representational research methodologies, particularly regarding the ways in which mindfulness might allow us to attend to affect and more-than-rational knowledges. However, in this paper, I trouble the use of mindfulness as a methodology in non-representational work. I argue that geographers need to be careful about the use of mindfulness as a methodology and would prefer to think of the ways that mindfulness might inflect our research practice. This point is developed through three main concerns. The first is the ways that mindfulness is narrated as a perceived ‘fix’ to the rationality of Western academic thought. This reinforces dualisms between Anglo-European academic knowledge as modern, disenchanted, and rational, and traditional ‘non-Western’ or indigenous vernacular or spiritual knowledge as non-rational and enchanted. The second concern is in regard to the universalisation of a mindful sensibility in mainstream understandings of mindfulness. I attend to the ways that processes of universalisation signal the whiteness of the movement and the ways the practice has been transmitted across contexts, cultures and institutions – a possible reason for the burgeoning methodological interest in mindfulness. Finally, this paper attends to ethics of care when using mindfulness as a methodology. Here, I focus on the ways that the pedagogical tenants of mindfulness could potentially open up participants to experiences of trauma and vulnerability. As a way forward, I advocate for a trauma-sensitive approach to mindful methodologies.