Drawing Out Alternative Methods for Understanding the Material Culture of Disability

Abstract

This presentation illustrates how drawings can be used as methods during data collection and data analysis to better understand the material culture of disability. Material culture is the study of how people interact with spatial environments and things. Even though material culture focuses on ‘thingness’ it typically involves collecting and analyzing data in relatively traditional ways such as conducting interviews and doing observations, yet studying thingness necessitates alternative ways of creating knowledge because less tangible concepts such as human movement, memories, and identities are significant to material culture studies. As such, this presentation demonstrates how drawing can aid towards better understanding pertinent concepts in material culture through studies that engage with disability through architectural design in Belgium, the Netherlands and Canada. The aim of our work is to better understand spatiality and thingness through the sensorial bodies of researchers and participants with different abilities. Drawings created as data and techniques used in data analysis through studies at museums, care homes and private homes are highlighted. These methods are re/articulations and re/presentations of embodied ways of experiencing and knowing designed spatiality and the material culture of disability; however, we believe that these methods of doing research have the potential to go beyond the study of thingness to aid in explorations into other queries.