Speaking Data and Telling Stories

Data Verbalization for Researchers

Martin Glynn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138486843
• eBook ISBN: 9781351044578
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Metodologia e ricerca nelle scienze sociali

Speaking Data and Telling Stories examines the interdependent relationship between method (Data Verbalization) and practice (performance). Data Verbalization is about communicating and disseminating research data using performance approaches and techniques such as; spoken word, jazz, hip-hop, and reggae theatrics.

Martin Glynn calls for the development of performance-driven research dissemination that seeks to bring urgent attention to minority, excluded, and marginalized perspectives within research dissemination as a whole. Employing the data verbalization method creates an exciting new proposition that can give progressive researchers a unique and distinct voice, alongside generating significant reach and impact beyond the academy, conference, and peer reviewed journal.

The book will be an invaluable resource for researchers, scholars, and related practitioners who want to strengthen their ability to communicate and disseminate research data using live performance / spoken word approaches and techniques. It will also provide guidance for students and researchers wanting to generate wider environmental, social, and cultural impact using research data creatively.

1

Hearing the subtext

This chapter lays the foundation for data verbalization as a contemporary ‘performance driven research dissemination’ method-technique. It further calls for a revision of research dissemination practices and approaches as a whole. I come to this position as stated previously, based on a history of denied access, exclusion, and marginalization from so-called mainstream academic circles. It is my firm belief that in a techno-centred society, research should ‘speak to power’ using mediums that gives voice to legitimate concerns from powerless and disadvantaged communities working alongside progressive researchers committed to social justice goals. For most of my working life I have used storytelling, poetry, theatre, and film in a variety of contexts and situations; education, public health, criminal justice, and youth work. During this period, I have had many requests for my techniques, methods, and approaches, to be made available for use in; training sessions, professional development workshops, group work activities, lecturing, etc. As a dramatist I have also been fortunate to have had many of my ideas produced for the stage, screen, and radio. Similarly, as an academic I have used an intersection of my academic-creative skills to provide a platform for many ‘silent’ and ‘invisible’ participants voices to speak to the world on their own terms. It is therefore a key focus of this introductory chapter to envision a way for research to be heard by ‘speaking the data’, (data verbalization). To do so I want to share my own personal journey as a way of contextualising ‘data verbalization’ as a reflexive account of my ongoing academic identity.

My journey

Friday 7 March 2014 was my PhD graduation day, which heralded the end of an arduous academic journey and the beginning of a new phase of my researcher identity as I was now officially acknowledged as an ‘academic’. Not just any academic I might add, but someone from an inner-city background, who was non-white, and in his late 50s. The immediacy of the intersectional nature of my identity had suddenly found new purpose. Although I didn’t know it at the time, the battle scars of my time as a doctoral student needed some much-needed attention and more importantly, healing. If the truth be told I’d never really sat comfortably (still don’t) within the confines of the so-called ‘ivory tower’ as I felt the constant pressure of having to conform to academic norms that at times tried to subordinate any sense of authenticity I had as an academic who was both racialized as black and critical. At times when I did assert a sense of cultural or racial pride, it was dismissed, labelled, and stigmatized. I did not feel connected to the growth and proliferation of the emerging ‘black bourgeoisie’ I encountered in the academy who tried to convince me that ‘moderated blackness’, would somehow give me credibility and tenure alongside the ‘white elite’ that many of them tried to emulate. Although at times it felt I was languishing in a black–white binary, I somehow knew it was a transitory moment. My overall desire was to be free from the ‘plantation mentality’ that drove a lot of my colleagues toward a mental decline based on having to navigating the ‘white space of academia’ that depleted both my emotional and physical energy and impacted significantly on any notion of positive psychic preservation. For me this was a period of personal reflection. One of the most rewarding aspects about being in mid-life is in the capacity to be straight with myself. My children were now grown and living independent lives, my grandchildren gave me a reason for telling tall stories, and I could at last feel comfortable at giving less energy to the dictates of anyone or anything that got in the way of my transition into this new phase of my life.

Clarity

Clarity about ‘who’ not ‘what’ I was bounded into my consciousness and brought me to a new point of personal understanding, which was more empowering than wallowing in the angst-ridden midlife crisis that was, and still is, ever present in my life. Don’t get me wrong there were, and still are, moments where self-doubt and over-analysing things crept into my consciousness that usually results in me sitting down and writing things out my system, more than festering alone with my thoughts. My life was now full of new thoughts, desires, and more importantly dreams. For the cynics among you I hadn’t won the lottery, nor had I paid the mortgage off, and I certainly was not flying high on the adrenalin of being in mid-life. Like many men, I had found being in mid-life hard, debilitating at times, and for the most part isolating, on account of the combination of physical and emotional changes taking place internally. So, I decided it was time to take stock take of my life. Physically, things could have been better, and my internal workings were calling out for a much-needed shift away from the treadmill existence that has been a staple of my life for many years.

New horizons

I remembered being at the start of a new semester when I announced to a new group of students that I was considering retirement. Yes! I had decided that after 35 years of frontline criminal justice practice, as many years lecturing, combined with the disillusionment of life ‘post doctorally’ I needed to move on with my life. I wanted to be free to change direction, seek new challenges, and more importantly do something for me. Unlike many of my colleagues I had developed new interests outside of the academy, where my doctorate was merely a tool to assist me in those pursuits. Plus, I had got married (aged 61). However, constantly hearing student’s questioning about my own positionality made me pause for a moment of critical reflection. My insecurities notwithstanding, the anticipation of new personal growth superseded any fears I might have had. In spite of some strong lingering doubts and being fearful of the consequences of pursuing a new and unfamiliar road, the mask of excitement slipped off as I felt a huge emptiness engulf me like a dense fog. I knew I didn’t want to continue going through the motions of my current liminal academic existence even if it was comforting as the desire and craving for a new adventure was more dominant. I then retreated to the safety and comfort of my vast array of books hoping they would come to my aid with an answer to my plight. I glanced around at my trusted friends and felt something good was going to happen. They brought the ancestral spirits to the fore and provided me with much-needed guidance and wisdom. Today felt like a different moment, a transitional one.

Reconnection

My eyes moved from side to side, up and down. Like soldiers on parade out they stepped. I pulled out four books; W.E.B. Du Bois (1938) Souls of Black Folk, Amiri Baraka (1963) (Formerly Leroi Jones) Blues People, Manning Marable’s (1995) Beyond Black and White, and finally, Arthur Bochner’s (2014) Coming to Narrative. I quickly removed them from the shelves and relocated to the living room, where I reacquainted myself with them, like old friends who hadn’t seen each other in a long time. I scanned the pages voraciously, familiarizing myself with our previous encounters. I was on a mission. And then the penny dropped. Each book different in style, tone, and content, were not academic journal articles, but more of a series of essays written from both personal and intellectual standpoints. DuBois’s notion of ‘Double Consciousness’ reminded me of the time I found myself adrift in academia. Amiri Baraka’s acerbic tones on the other hand wrote with a passionate anger about racism in 1960s America, that helped me contextualize the contemporary reality of being black and academic, within a predominantly white institution. Manning Marable’s essays similarly made me feel comfortable with the importance of not separating my public, professional, and personal self, from the politics of racialization and blackness. And finally, Arthur Bochner reminded me that the reconciliation of my divided self, transcended the need for academic validation.

Relief

Moments later I shed a few tears of relief, followed by dousing myself in John Coltrane’s ‘Love Supreme’. I now had what I needed to proceed to the next level. A decision that would change the direction of my academic future. Excited by my discovery I went to see my wife Jen. I told her that their writing had pushed me to find a way to be the kind of academic I wanted to be. The kind of academic that embraced passion, not the security of tenure, a research contract, or a senior lecturer’s position. I no longer felt the insecurity of indecision. I went back to my computer, dredged my files, and discovered to my surprise that I had written many essays, journal articles, and scripts. I felt it was time to bring them to life. I took the decision there and then to dedicate myself to put my academic work into a creative form and reconnect to my formers passions. I now had to confront a deeper issue. Namely, the choice not to retire, but to reposition myself within the wider academic landscape that had previously excluded me. I now wanted to push the boundaries of negative conservative academic expectations to dedicate myself to ‘adapting’ and ‘performing’ my research and build a new future for myself; less as a traditional academic, but more of a ‘performance driven dissemination specialist’.

Safe space

I wanted to occupy a new ‘safe space’ where intellectual subjectivity would not be a barrier to me exploring what I felt about the things in my research that concerned me and were most important to the wider community. For years I’d felt uneasy at sending my stuff to academic journals knowing that some of my peers may read what I’d been doing, but the community from which my work had emerged would never see or read them. Equally as upsetting was the countless conferences I’d spoken at, where hardly anyone looked like the participants of my research. I remembered how many hours I’d spent alone in hotel rooms after the conference sessions had finished wondering if I had any impact, or if I just being scoped out by the competition of other competitive academics vying for a place in the academic Olympics. This state of affairs has always troubled me, and still does. Mainly because I am a critical researcher, criminologist, dramatist, and a community person from the inner city who seldom sees the implementation of the recommendations many of us push out in our reports and articles. The continuous observations of the crumbling inner city infrastructure where I live, combined with the lack of resources available to repair the broken human dam for me, demanded a response.

My divided self

As a criminologist I had been steeped in the outgrowths of human misery where a life can be lost easily through crime and violence, where young people are no longer seeking mediation to solve disputes, and the duality of ‘moral panic’ and the ‘fear society’ reduce notions of ‘community’ to a mere sound bite in the local media. As a parent, grandparent, and lately, a great-grand parent I had similarly seen my idealism around notions of family and community replaced with generations facing more social disorganization than social cohesion. For years I had also encountered so many ‘shadow people’; those silent voices on the margins of society who demanded that I bring their stories to a wider public. Reflecting on Bochner’s view of the ‘divided self’ I decided that I could no longer subscribe to living with my ‘divided self’ for the sake of appeasing the liberal consciousness of academics both black and white. I also lacked interest in gaining credibility inside academia that had declared war on the articulation of anything that wants to contest both the epistemological and ontological claims supporting ‘white privilege’ that rendered my difference/s subordinate.

Post-doctorally

Then it happened. A unification of my ‘divided self’ provided both the stimulus and tipping point by bringing a much-needed truce to my personal and professional personas. For the first time in years they were no longer at war with each other. It was my intellectual coming of age, with the pulse of a hip-hop beat, the fire of a reggae bass-line, and the power of a Coltrane solo. More importantly my thoughts, feelings, and ideas now saw the light of day. However, in spite of the knowledge I now possessed, I still struggled with knowing that few things had changed in the world of the criminal justice system since completing my doctorate. When I look back, I was in a state of denial for quite some time during the early stages of my academic career post-doctorally. Namely, the primary goal of researchers like me is to shape the consciousness of the disaffected, marginalized, and those lingering in the shadows, and to equip with them with the tools so they can seek their liberation. In essence the lesson discovered here was my studies, the pursuit of new knowledge, and the pain of academic study, was no longer about my own personal brand of selfishness, but one that was part of a ‘cycle of change’ where I was a mere cog in a bigger wheel. I decided I needed to remove of my negative thinking and pursue my own truth.

Breaking free

I knew that I had to break free from the narrow academic constructs, where the ideals of power, privilege and elitism remained heavily embedded within the dominant culture within the institution. I needed to (re)define my academic identity by engaging in a more mature conversation about my scholarly positionality. I believed that scholars like myself must look outward and consider the changing realities of living in a modern society. To this end I decided I did not want to replicate structures and frameworks that excluded on the basis of placing academic status in a vanguard position, above the marginalized and disaffected communities that informed my research portfolio. Having been engaged in many research and evaluations I became increasingly concerned about the restrictions, barriers, and difficulties in bringing my work to the attention of the public, commissioners, policy makers, etc. I was equally as concerned that when my work was presented, the academic conventions that were available stipulated that I presented my findings in ways that at times did not do justice to the ‘voices’ and ‘stories’ of the participants, who were the co-constructors of my research, who shared their testimonies with me throughout the research process. Coming from a performance background I had always operated outside the box by finding creative ways to bring the key messages to my audience in accessible ways.

Continuing struggle

However, I had struggled to find any significant infrastructure, training programmes, or learning modules that would assist others in wanting to combine research and performance as a way of creating an innovative way of disseminating their work. Recently, old friends and contacts from my past reminded me that I was always a storyteller who influenced others through the power of story. My ability to tell ‘lies’ as a child through fabricating and bending the truth, combined with holding an audience captive, reminded me that the foundation for my current journey was laid a long time ago. Having worked in hundreds of schools running creative writing/performance workshops, undertaken countless residencies in criminal justice, public health, and educational settings, combined with delivering conference speeches, and conducting research projects, it was evident that the capacity to communicate my ideas has by and large been transmitted through stories. Some of it has been performative, while others have been philosophical, and lately with my academic work I have had to use stories to break down complex and sophisticated abstract ideas contained within my research. The acknowledgement that stories important and can impact on many different levels is important here.

Story-making

Using storytelling to inspire, motivate, and uplift; whether at school, in the community, in a prison, or any other spaces I found myself in, telling stories enabled them to work through problems using the ‘story wisdom’ I imparted. As modern living is at times fraught with complex, difficu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• To myself
• Acknowledgements
• Data Verbalization: Speaking Data and Telling Stories
• Who is this book for?
• Organisation of the book
• Prologue: To be or not to be Data Verbalization?
• 1. Hearing the subtext
• 2. Performing research and praxis
• 3. Data verbalization and bricolage
• 4. Creating and Producing Data Verbalization
• 5. Data verbalization and impact
• 6. Data verbalization and the presentation of self
• 7. Blended learning and data verbalization
• 8. Data verbalization and social media
• Epilogue – Future directions
• Index