participant observations
The notes describe an attempt to comprehend how Sarah's method of studying trees leads to the emergence of identity, meaning, and relationship. They demonstrate how her work is based on techniques that prioritize relational involvement, present, and sensory awareness above detached observation. The key takeaway from all of the notes is that one learns about trees by actively engaging with them through touch, movement, atmosphere, and emotional reaction. According to the notes, Sarah's approach questions human-centered presumptions and presents research as a collaborative, adaptable relationship between humans and trees.
🌳 How Your Sit‑Spot Notes Align With Abbott’s Tree Knowing
Below I pair each Sit‑Spot dimension with Abbott’s methodological principles and show how to use them in your participant observation.
1. Embodied Ontology → Abbott’s “being with” trees
Your note: heaviness in legs, breath shifting, trees as presences.
Abbott: emphasizes co-presence—the researcher’s body participates in the encounter, not just observes it.
How to incorporate:
Begin each observation session with a brief embodied check-in (gravity, breath, temperature).
Write fieldnotes that include your bodily sensations as part of the relational field.
Treat your body as an instrument of perception, not a neutral observer.
What this does: It positions you inside the multispecies encounter, which is exactly Abbott’s stance.
2. Motion as Relational Attention → Abbott’s attention to micro-agency
Your note: trembling branches, rotating leaves, crow arcs.
Abbott: attends to subtle movements as expressions of tree presence, responsiveness, or agency.
How to incorporate:
Track micro-movements: leaf rotations, trunk sway, shifting shadows.
Note when motion feels communicative or patterned.
Ask: What is the tree doing? What is it responding to?
What this does: It reframes motion as participation rather than background noise.
3. Touch as Reciprocity → Abbott’s emphasis on mutual affect
Your note: air touching skin, ground texture “almost communicative.”
Abbott: foregrounds reciprocity—trees and environments act on the researcher.
How to incorporate:
Document not only what you touch, but what touches you.
Attend to textures, temperatures, resistances, and how they shift your mood or awareness.
Let “touch” be a two-way relation in your fieldnotes.
What this does: It enacts Abbott’s claim that knowing emerges through mutual contact.
4. Sound as Attunement → Abbott’s “listening otherwise”
Your note: soundscape reorganizing when you cup your ears.
Abbott: uses listening as a method of attuning to nonhuman presence.
How to incorporate:
Use intentional listening practices (cupped ears, directional listening).
Note how sound rearranges your sense of space or presence.
Ask participants how they “listen” to trees—emotionally, spiritually, or physically.
What this does: It turns sound into a relational method, not just a sensory input.
5. Smell as Memory & Emotion → Abbott’s attention to affective histories
Your note: crushed leaf smell evokes childhood, safety.
Abbott: treats affective memory as part of multispecies relationality.
How to incorporate:
Track smells and the memories/emotions they evoke.
Ask participants about scents that matter to them in tree encounters.
Use smell as an entry point into personal histories with trees.
What this does: It opens the door to the spiritual and emotional dimensions central to your project.
6. Vision as Encounter → Abbott’s “object becomes subject” moments
Your note: twig feels like it’s “holding its own presence.”
Abbott: describes moments where trees appear as subjects with agency or presence.
How to incorporate:
Spend extended time visually attending to one tree or part of a tree.
Note when the tree feels like a “someone” rather than a “something.”
Track shifts in your perception of its presence.
What this does: It creates the phenomenological encounters Abbott sees as ethnographically meaningful.
7. Slow Walking as Ethical Movement → Abbott’s ethics of gentleness
Your note: each step becomes a negotiation with the ground.
Abbott: emphasizes moving gently, attentively, without assuming dominance.
How to incorporate:
Use slow walking as part of your participant observation routine.
Treat movement as a form of respect and attunement.
Note how your pace changes what you notice.
What this does: It embeds ethics directly into your method.
8. Integration / Being-With → Abbott’s relational ontology
Your note: feeling “more porous,” “being-with rather than being-in.”
Abbott: argues that ethnographic encounters with trees produce relational states of being.
How to incorporate:
End each observation session with a reflective note on your relational state.
Track shifts in mood, openness, groundedness, or connection.
Use these reflections to analyze how encounters shape your positionality.
What this does: It turns your own experience into data—exactly what Abbott models.
🌱 How to Use This in Your Participant Observation
Here’s a practical workflow you can adopt:
Before entering the field
Do a 2–3 minute Sit‑Spot grounding (breath, body, sound, touch).
Set an intention: I am entering a relational field.
During observation
Move slowly and gently.
Attend to micro-movements, textures, sounds, smells.
Let yourself be affected—emotionally, spiritually, sensorially.
Note moments of encounter or presence.
After observation
Write reflexive notes:
How did the tree affect you?
What shifted in your body?
What relational dynamics emerged?
Connect these reflections to Abbott’s framework.
With participants
Use Sit‑Spot–style prompts to elicit sensory and spiritual narratives.
Ask about their embodied, emotional, and relational experiences with trees.
Let Abbott guide your openness to nonhuman agency in their stories.