Ethnographies of Blindness: The Method of Sensory Knowledge

Engaging with a research population highly sensitive to sound, touch, taste, and smell, and participating in activities that incorporate and emphasize the lived body, my research with blind people has given me an acute sensitivity to the sensory dimensions of qualitative inquiry and led me to critically examine terms such as “participant observation” and the “researcher’s gaze.”1 The opening quote is a snapshot from one occasion that raised my awareness of these topics, when I conducted a research “observation” with my eyes closed. In 2009, during my first visit to a guide dog center for the blind in Israel, 2 I met with an experienced staff person, a blind man in his fifties, an integral member of the training staff who took on the informal role of “gatekeeper” after my request to tour the center.He insisted I articulate my intentions and goals, and was clearly suspicious about the details of my research. After I spent some time with him and tried my best to leave a good impression, the guide made an unexpected offer that asked for a profound methodological adjustment on my behalf, as he conditioned his collaboration with one simple request: that I would be blindfolded for the entire visit at the center and study it through my senses other than sight.