Figure 4: Racial segregation mapping

Figure 4: Racial segregation mapping

2.4. Literature Review 2

Placemaking, From story to

Fulfilling the research objective requires translating and applying the data gathered through the research methodology and methods. Autoethnography produces a limited quantity of data, and a qualitative research methodology focuses on individuals, requiring a more rigorous implementation method. According to Denzin and Lincoln (2000: 3), “qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or to interpret, phenomena in terms of the meaning people bring to them”. That data of psychology and social health healing practices apply to the information found through the critical analysis of the autoethnography. The healing practices are outside the span of the author’s experience in their applicability. Thus, this research required data gathering from either other persons or the knowledge of professionals or leaders in the field. After which, the author compares the data to what we understand of typology as a concept, and the form it takes in the social health framework explored as limited by the data gathered in the autoethnography and qualitative methodologies of enquiry. Autoethnography has many theorised forms. One effective in this enquiry is “evocative autoethnography” (Anderson, 2006: 387), where the narration carries the more intangible elements of the narrated account. Autoethnography as a research methodology is increasingly used due to many researchers who have used and critically analysed its validity. One of the primary arguments regarding autoethnography is its validity in applying witness experience and participatory experience. (Walford, 2004: 408) In other terms, whether the researcher is an insider or an outsider in what they are narrating. The commonly held conclusion is that autoethnography is not contrary to the common belief. Instead, we should see autoethnography as standing between the two states of experience. Autoethnography avoids giving the researcher the undeserved privilege of being an insider and outsider (ReedDanahay, 2009: 29). This dual viewpoint applies to the author’s experience when they speak on in their recorded autoethnographic experience. The author often witnessed the social performance of a group of people that they have experienced in a different context yet had not directly participated. In some cases, their role was closer to an outsider than an insider as the participants communicated in their native West and East African languages, of which the author had no understanding. These experiences show how, as a genre of writing, autoethnography places the author in the same social context as those they observe (Archetti, 1998: 216) whether the experience was first-hand or not.

The art of storytelling and narration finds its strength in the level of detail that the data produces. On the other hand, especially in architecture, research investigates and produces social contexts and phenomena. This alignment means that recorded persons’ experiences must be translated and associated with the larger social contexts. To achieve this, the author has to use multiple techniques to depict the relevant experiences accurately and record them. The author will then pick the experiences apart and include only the parts of the experience that have relevant translatable data. Various literature was written about this research methodology by researchers who used a similar research topic. This research will use that literature to translate and gather the data for the researcher and the researched users. This literature will primarily be texts supported by visual graphics and other means.

As applied by researchers as a form of qualitative research methodology, autoethnographers do not want you to sit back as spectators; they want readers to feel and care and desire (Bochner, 1996: 24). This method is helpful in recording emotion, experience, and phenomena fundamental in social and mental health. However, some researchers have heavily critiqued some aspects of autoethnography. An example of the critique would be from Walford (2004), who says, “If people wish to write fiction, they have every right to do so, but not every right to call it research”. This touches on the possibility of distortion when recording experiences through the user of the lenses through which the experience is perceived. Although this criticism often applies to qualitative research, it is most often relevant to constructivism and phenomenology.