1. Rural Connections: Knitting the fabric of community?
Presentation to Third Annual Conference of ALTER-ESDR
Lisbon, July 2-4th 2014
“Exploring Disability: Epistemologies, Policies and Politics”,
Liz Ellis, PhD candidate
The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

2. Research outline
Using mobile methods – advantages and disadvantages
Initial outcomes
Connections: Kin, Friends, Kith, Proximal
Rhizomes
Connection mats

3. Research in a nutshell
PhD project exploring belonging, rurality and the experiences of people with learning difficulties.
Inclusive research process (Walmsley & Johnson 2003).
Co-researchers involved in design, data collection and analysis.
Used mobile or ‘go-along’ methods.

4. Key Research Questions Themes of Research Trips
Who do people with LD see regularly?
Where do people with LD see people
What stops people with LD being part of their community (and the opposite, what helps)?
How have things changed over time?
Places I feel good going to
Places I go to regularly
Outside my front door
Places in my past

6. Mobile Research methods
Advantages
Disadvantages
Situates the research in the space
Helps to equalise the research relationship
Rich data
Naturalistic and reciprocal
Consent issues
Self-censorship
Mountains of data!
Time-consuming

7. Some Outcomes Connections Autonomy and Interdependence
“Staying Local” (Ledger 2012)

8. Relationship between different connections
/Kin

10. Source for drawings: Riviere A. and C
Source for drawings: Riviere A. and C., Les Bambous, végétation, culture, mutliplication. Paris 1878
“Rhizomes are oppositional to trees which symbolise hierarchies, linearity and extreme stratification. Ignore trees. Think, instead, of weeds, grass, swarms and packs… points on a rhizome always connect to something else; rhizomes are heterogeneous not dichotomous; they are made up of a multiplicity of lines that extend in all directions; they break off, but then they begin again.” (Goodley 2007 :13)

11. Liz’s connection mat

12. John’s connection mat

13. Mark’s connection mat

14. Questions What might it mean?
Can we reproduce kith in other communities?
Or is “staying local” the only antidote to fragmenting communities?

15. References
Antaki, C., Finlay, W. M. L., & Walton, C. (2007). The staff are your friends: intellectually disabled identities in official discourse and interactional practice. The British Journal of Social Psychology / the British Psychological Society, 46(Pt 1), 1–18. doi: / X94437
Clark, A., & Emmel, N. (2010). Realities Toolkit # 13: Using walking interviews (pp. 1–6).
Donovan, C., Heaphy, B., & Weeks, J. (2001). Same Sex Intimacies: Families of Choice and Other Life Experiments (p. 256). Routledge.
Fink, J. (2011). Walking the neighbourhood, seeing the small details of community life: Reflections from a photography walking tour. Critical Social Policy, 32(1), 31–50. doi: /
Goodley, D. (2007). Towards socially just pedagogies: Deluzoguattarian critical disability studies. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 11(3), 1–25.
Goodley, D., Hughes, B., Davis, L. J., Mallett, R., Runswick-cole, K., Grech, S., … Reeve, D. (2012). Introducing Disability and Social Theory. In Disability and Social Theory: New Developments and Directions (Vol. 26, p. NP). Palgrave Macmillan. doi: /intimm/dxu005
Hughes, R. P., Redley, M., & Ring, H. (2011). Friendship and Adults With Profound Intellectual and Multiple Disabilities and English Disability Policy. Journal of Policy and Practice in Intellectual Disabilities, 8(3), 197–206. doi: /j x
Ledger, S. J. (2012). Staying local: support for people with learning difficulties from inner London Open University.
Mason, P., Timms, K., Hayburn, T., & Watters, C. (2013). How Do People Described as having a Learning Disability Make Sense of Friendship? Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities : JARID, 26(2), 108–18. doi: /jar.12001
Shildrick, M., & Price, J. (2005). Deleuzian Connections and Queer Corporealities: Shrinking Global Disability. Rhizomes, 11/12. Retrieved from
Trell, E., & van Hoven, B. (2010). Making sense of place: exploring creative and (inter) active research methods with young people Making sense of place. FENNIA, 188(1).
Walmsley, J., & Johnson, K. (2003). Inclusive Research with People with Learning Disabilities: Past, Present and Futures. Jessica Kingsley.