Geography Lessons for Researchers: A Look into the Research Space for Humanity Lost or Gained

Hannah Arendt has stated that humanity is gained when the differences of power that constitute the public realm are acknowledged in relational interac‐tions. It is the argument of this article that research relationships are not private relationships but are part of the public realm. Relations of power may be unacknowledged, but where knowledge is being generated, they are especially operative. Research relationships are reconceptualized dynamically as a research space in which two subjectivities, differently situated in terms of power, interact like two borders intersecting. Via a review of some classic research literature, including work by Rosaldo, Behar, Patai, Oakley, Heath, and Peshkin, this article goes on to explore how these researchers attend and do not attend to differences of power between themselves and their participants.