This paper reiterates the intention and importance of positionality statements, encouraging researchers to approach positionality through vignettes to engage with our role and impact as scholars rather than as a formulaic description of a researcher's demographic characteristics and identities. We argue positionality can be a tool to strengthen hazards and disaster research, particularly when approached as an ongoing, iterative process.
As early career researchers conducting fieldwork in the United States Gulf South, we considered the intention, importance and relevancy of positionality statements. We engaged in a collaborative writing process where we discussed our experiences in the field and revisited previously written reflexivity and positionality statements to create vignettes. Through the use of vignettes, we provide a path for researchers to reflect and disclose ethical and moral research considerations and power differentials that shape their research.
Positionality statements can be limited and harmful when applied without critical examination of their intent and are at risk of being detrimental when recycled across multiple projects spanning distinct partnerships and place-based research endeavors. We suggest vignettes can serve a crucial function in developing ethical disaster-related research cognizant of its epistemological engagement with the topic, place of research and the people we engage in the field.
Through vignettes, we provide a path to situate one’s positionality to further advance ethical disaster research intentional of reducing harm to communities at risk of disasters.
