Relational knowing as method and practice

Abstract

This paper seeks to contribute to (re)building the capacity for embodied, place‐based relational knowing, transforming how we know and thus what we know. What is known, or sought to be known, is relations. How we know these relations is by already being in it: breathing, sensing, moving, listening, responding, affecting and being affected. Autoethnographic inquiry, grounded in daily practices of journalling, reading, writing, meditation and co‐becoming with place, namely a small garden, allowed me to experience the world relationally, as situated, partial, embodied, affective and more‐than‐human. Through this process, four interwoven practices emerged: witnessing‐participation, which dissolves the subject–object divide, inviting us into more‐than‐human worlds; place‐based knowing, where place is a site of knowing rather than a backdrop; co‐becoming, experienced as entanglements and reciprocity in each encounter; and care, understood as attuned and situated response‐ability for creating and sustaining lifeworlds. Together, these practices enact a transformation, in which the ‘self’ shifts from detached observer to participant, continually co‐constituted through lived relations. From this ‘micropolitical’ shift, we are better placed to contribute to meaningful macropolitical shifts and transformations. The paper contributes a practice‐oriented account of relational transformation for scholars and practitioners engaging with relational ways of knowing, offering concrete orientations as guides for learning to inhabit relationality rather than merely theorise it. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.