Learning to ‘site-see’: place-reflexivity as a methodological tool for qualitative researchers

The purpose of this paper is to further examine ‘place-reflexivity’ as a methodological tool for engaging in site-seeing in qualitative research. Qualitative research often involves a site or field. Yet, the ‘where’ of qualitative research has often been overlooked in methodological discussions. This approach is akin to sightseeing where sites are a backdrop rather than foregrounded. We draw on scholarship that conceptualizes site, place, field, and context from sociological, geographical and anthropological disciplines, as well as on concepts of third space as they apply to qualitative inquiry. We offer an argument for the fuller inclusion, and expanded treatment of sites including tools to assist qualitative researchers with this type of thinking.