Making connections through intimacy writing: writing as method in social and cultural geography

This paper considers the value of writing in human geography. It comments on forms of writing that reflect on personal experience to inform our understanding of questions of power and social difference. We offer a methodological reflection for connecting writing as practice with understanding social difference, as well as applying these ideas to our study of youth identities. Through close engagements with writing, as both method and textual evidence, we reveal how it provides access to more intimate experiences of social processes. Crucially, we suggest that this potential has not yet been fully developed, particularly in terms of how such writings can be better connected collectively through a framing that allows for a deeper understanding of social (in)justice and difference. This also allows us to reflect on the distinctive nature of writing as a praxis through which social identity can be critically engaged with. Through a ‘reflection-upon-reflection’ of past student submissions to undergraduate modules, we work with students involved as co-authors to draw out three key aspects that are enabled through reflexive writing-as-method: first the importance of writing as storytelling, second writing and its relationship with self and identity, and third, the temporality of writing as an emergent practice.