Travel as Methodology
Photo of a directional distance sign located in Foz do Iguaçu, PR, Brasil. Wilson Vitorino. November 17, 2018. Image from Pexels.
For traveling scholars, the last two years have presented a paradox, as capacities for global contacts and connections have continued developing, even as COVID-19 greatly constrained physical travel. This contrast presents the opportunity to reflect on travel, in all its forms and flaws, as a research tool. Though perhaps more closely associated with natural scientists who venture out to collect data samples, exploration and investigation have long been important tools for many different researchers, including anthropologists and historians of Latin America. I would like to propose that travel should be considered a crucial methodology for these scholars, because, while it faces certain limitations, the academic and epistemological benefits of travel are enough to outweigh them.
Though generally left implicit, the idea of travel as methodology should be familiar to historians and anthropologists in the United States and Latin America, most of whom must journey either to visit archives, conduct interviews and observations, or to present research. Pandemic travel restraints have clarified some of the nuances of this familiar yet usually tacit methodology. One issue is archival. It is true that in the digital age, immobility is not such an insurmountable obstacle—in my experience as a historian of U.S.-Peruvian relations, for example, I have used excellent online repositories of U.S. government records. Yet far more records are accessible only in-person. The inability to access most records online is a significant limitation for historians who aim to decenter U.S. actors and destabilize narratives of U.S. dominance—hence underlining the importance of physical travel when possible.
Similar considerations emerge for those scholars who rely on oral interviews. In-person interviews are crucial to expanding research horizons—many ground-level experiences do not make it into the archive, and travel can be a corrective to those silences. Yet COVID, even where it has not altogether eliminated travel, has often transformed its character through increased reliance on video calls, internet, and social media. We might think of this as a form of digital “travel,” wherein both opportunities and problems emerge. As with the archival dilemma, these digital techniques can function as avenues to use innovative sources (Paulo Drinot, for instance, has used YouTube comments as a source base), and digital communications can of course also facilitate interviewee access. Yet there is a flattening at risk in oral research done via digital “travel,” as well as an exacerbation of problematic power dynamics. Interviews devoid of real (non-digital) human interaction are more likely to encounter miscommunication or miss crucial insights, while increasing the performativity of the interview by asking for answers on camera. Meanwhile, the potential need to guide a subject in using relevant technology can reinforce the power differential between interviewer and subject. These issues do not negate the utility of such technologies (and I do not mean to imply that many or most Latin American interviewees have no familiarity with digital communication technology), but, as with any methodology, the potential limitations of digital travel must be kept in mind.[1]
Beyond short-term archival or digital travel, it is also worth briefly considering the potential that exists in long-term travel. The matter of source access is most relevant and is familiar to both historians and anthropologists. For example, in her book about Nicolás Ailío, a small Mapuche community in Chile, Florencia Mallon describes the dialogical method that she nurtured by traveling repeatedly and for increasing lengths of time to the community, eventually forming deep friendships and developing a book in the form of collective ethnography, written for and with extensive input of Nicolás Ailío residents. She writes movingly about the impossibility of forming these relationships without repeated and lengthy visits—in other words, long-term travel (Mallon 20).
Others have expounded upon the general importance of travel for the traveler themselves. Philosopher Emily Thomas defines the very essence of travel as experiencing “otherness,” arguing these encounters destabilize our conceptions of what is natural or normal in our daily lives (Thomas 4). Similar benefits manifest in research. Traveling scholars are more equipped to write richer narratives that eschew narrow, elite focuses, facilitated by a deeper understanding of the communities they are studying and the difficulties they face in the present and have faced in the past. To take another example from my field: the history of U.S.-Latin American relations used to be universally written from Washington’s perspective, even in revisionist critiques (Long). Traveling can be one way to step out of this sort of scholarly tunnel vision, not just to access sources but also to immerse oneself in the societies of those who confronted and at times subverted U.S. hegemony. In turn this can provide the foundations of an empathetic, multiperspectival history that goes beyond the archival record. In other words, travel as a methodology helps unsettle simple narratives, as scholars are enabled to embark on physical and epistemological journeys. Travel, therefore, serves as a reality check for academics, facilitating nuance, empathy, and, hopefully, social justice.
Some words of warning remain. Travelers are not the only ones impacted by their journeys. There is some level of reciprocity, both negative and positive. Negatively, there are tangible risks to thoughtless travel, which can do social, environmental, and economic damage to the places or people around us (Thomas; Stainton; Tajera). More broadly, researchers must consider what they bring and what they leave behind. How will their research be used? Will it empower the marginalized? Help amplify their voices? Or will it simply win the scholar professional gain? For U.S. academics, are they carrying the baggage of American imperialism, through either their funding sources or their research goals? (Voosen). Answering these questions is a critical corollary to travel as methodology if we are to mitigate its risks.
Yet there can also be a connection between the positive values of travel and the content and purpose of academic research. There is a way to conceive of scholarship as a form of social justice—in my case, with the goal of exposing the dynamics of power and resistance that shaped and still shape U.S.-Latin American relations. Others might seek to explore processes of community building or social movements, environmental activism or migration between the United States and Latin America—the list goes on. Such projects prove all but impossible without travel as a methodology, in all its flawed complexity and ultimate indispensability.
[1] Thanks to Verenize Arceo for bringing my attention to some of these challenges in digital oral history.
About the Author
Nicki Day-Lucore is originally from Denver, Colorado and is now a Ph.D. student beginning her fourth year in the History Department at UW-Madison, where she is starting research for her dissertation. It will explore the evolution of U.S.-Peruvian-Chilean relations between 1968 and 1975. Her goal with this project and as a historian is to create multiperspectival and transnational narratives that capture complex power dynamics, while also excavating resistance to U.S. hegemony that countries like Peru and Chile undertook at the time. She believes this is an important way of understanding how past decisions have shaped the world today.
Works Cited
Drinot, Paulo. “Remembering Velasco: Contested Memories of the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces.” The Peculiar Revolution: Rethinking the Peruvian Experiment under Military Rule, University of Texas Press, 2017, pp. 95–119.
Long, Tom. Latin America Confronts the United States: Asymmetry and Influence. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Mallon, Florencia. Courage Tastes of Blood: The Mapuche Community of Nicolás Ailío and the Chilean State, 1906–2001. Duke University Press, 2005.
Stainton, Hayley. “Disaster Tourism Explained: What, Why and Where.” Tourism Teacher, March 3, 2022, https://tourismteacher.com/disaster-tourism-what-why-and-where/.
Tajera, Javier. “Para una crítica al discurso turístico dominante: Entrevista a Rodrigo Fernández Miranda en Ecotumismo.” Ecotumismo, January 18, 2013, https://www.ecotumismo.org/rodrigo-fernandez-miranda-es-lamentable-que-en-nombre-de-la-sostenibilidad-turistica-se-adopten-estrategias-cosmeticas-de-marketing/.
Thomas, Emily. The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Voosen, Paul. “The Oaxaca Incident.” Chronicle, April 27, 2016, https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-oaxaca-incident/.
