Over Researched Places

Towards a Critical and Reflexive Approach

Cat Button, Gerald Taylor Aiken, Cat Button, Gerald Taylor Aiken

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780367567750
• eBook ISBN: 9781000571202
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Human Geography

The book explores the implications that research-density has on the people and places researched, on the researchers, on the data collected and knowledge produced, and on the theories that are developed.

It examines the effects that research-density has on the people and places researched, on the researchers, on the data collected and knowledge produced, and on the theories that are developed. By weaving together experiences from a variety of countries and across disciplinary boundaries and research methods, the volume outlines the roots of over-research, where it comes from and what can be done about it.

The book will be useful for social science students and researchers working in ethnographic disciplines such as Human Geography, Anthropology, Urban Planning, and Sociology and seeking to navigate the tricky 'absent present' of already existing research on their fields of exploration.

1 Towards a theory of over-researched places

Gerald Taylor Aiken

DOI: 10.4324/9781003099291-2

Introduction

What is over-research and what can we do about it? This chapter sets over-research in the context of wider trends and patterns in academic research. Framing over-research as ‘over’ points out that totemic case study locations in any topic—which may or may not be fair representatives of the field—are a problem. First, and most basically, it is a problem in social research for those being researched. When one group or place becomes ‘The Place’ where this research is done, it seems that everyone wants a piece of the action and those on the ground can become swamped. Research has developed tools and techniques to deal with this from participative action research, coproduction of knowledge, or more light touch, remote-sensing qualitative methodologies. However, the argument here is that while these techniques can come to terms with research fatigue, they do not address over-research in a more systematic way.

It is also unfair to expect research subjects to be organised enough to adequately hold off pushy researchers, especially research on/with more marginalised people and places without the resources to cope with or the awareness of what is at stake. These issues, which often go under the term research fatigue, are a problem not only for the research participants but also for the research itself. In qualitative research, interviewing and ethnographic and participative evidence and experience gathering are dulled by being ‘yet another’ researcher among a steady stream. As the quantity of research increases, interviewees can become jaded. Nevertheless, over-research is a more encompassing phenomenon than research fatigue. Over-research can also fail to accurately represent the issues at stake and can also worsen the quality of the data gathered. Representationally, it can also over-simplify complex phenomena. The chapter argues that over-research is a structural issue—or at least a deeply sedimented one—in current academic research. Over-research arises as much from a researcher’s social context as their individual choices. That is, the way researchers are socialised plays as much a role in producing over-research as an individual choice or decision. Importantly, this lessens the moral responsibility of researchers. It also allows an analysis to be made of under-research as a corollary to, and a coexisting challenge to, over-research.

Thus, this chapter first addresses over-research, what it means, and how it comes to be. In particular, the chapter argues there is a lot to be gained by separating over-research from research fatigue. These two often come together in the literature but I want to argue that they are significantly distinct. By surveying noted effects such as bandwagoning, the Matthew effect, and Price’s law, this chapter tries to offer some theoretical diagnostic tools that help understand what over-research is and thus begin to chart a way to think through what can be done about it, distinct to research fatigue. The chapter then ends with an example of a deeply sedimented case of over-research: Chicago. This is thus a more abstract and analytical chapter than the rest of this book which is more empirically grounded, hopefully helping to produce a more balanced and integrative collection.

Beginning to research over-research

One topic of rapidly expanding research interest, verging on over-research, is the Transition Town movement. Transition is a model of community-based DIY environmentalism that, in the decade since its founding in 2007, has become the go-to example of a range of community initiatives for sustainability, at least in the UK. Much academic attention also followed. As one of the first PhD students studying this emerging Transition Town movement, I had a box-office seat to witness this rapid expansion. When I shifted from volunteering, and being involved in environmental activism as a participant, to being paid to study the same movements (very fortunately with a scholarship to carry out a PhD), I set up search alerts, Google Scholar notifications, and RSS feeds to let me know whenever any new relevant information was published. Early on, I would eagerly lap up these alerts and anticipate any new article being published on the Transition’s model of community-based environmentalism—not only academic articles but also blog posts, recorded lectures, or online published Master’s theses. Very soon, however, it became impossible to keep up with everything that was published on this topic. Transition rapidly expanded as an area of interest and the sheer quantity of literature being produced became overwhelming. I had to learn to be selective. There is no way any one researcher could have read everything on even this very specific empirical example of Transition Towns. Eventually, I would skip the outputs that looked less appealing, until it got to the point where I was able to read less than half of what was published. Eventually, I was only reading, and then just scanning, a fraction of even what my alerts informed me of. When the time came to shift jobs and e-mail addresses, I did not set up these alerts again. No doubt I missed lots of excellent insights, but even sifting through these alerts had become a significant task. So, when thinking through reasons why new researchers can be covering the ground already researched before—even asking the same questions to the same people—I want to hold the individual responsibilities of the researcher lightly. I know how easy it can be to skip research already carried out—even very good research on a highly relevant and specific topic. I was embedded in the field of human geography and, rather sheepishly and embarrassingly, would note years later that something highly relevant to my own research was already published in sociology, anthropology, or political science. No doubt, I missed much more. Given this experience, I want to marry an individual or case-by-case analysis to a more diagnostic one—to hold the whole manner in which academia burgeons in productivity, outputs, and publications responsible too. Together with the ways in which we as researchers have been enjoined to turn every research observation into an output, attempting to understand what was going on here led to more readings on over-research itself, conversations with colleagues at the time (shout out to Cat Button), and, eventually, this volume. This section reviews some of the most helpful writings, but also, given this experience, tries to push them for a more comprehensive understanding and diagnosis of over-research.

There is a small but growing selection of writings outlining that over-research exists, defining it, showing that it is a problem, and even some tentative suggestions as to what can be done about it. What many of these pieces miss though is a direct examination of over-research itself, and more helpfully, an outline of why. What is it exactly that produces over-research? By what process and mechanisms does research tend towards this ‘bunching up’? The answer to this needs to hold in tension both the reasons why individual researchers choose to be drawn towards the same honeypot sites, alongside a more structural critique that analyses the underlying conditions of why research itself tends towards the ‘usual suspects’. Going further, helpful analysis would ask how those usual suspects come to be produced in the first place. To be clear, not every study or subfield has the same gravitational pull towards the same site or topic but there is, at the very least, a pervasive over-representation in research: whether an iconic study, a ‘rock star researcher’, a famous case study location, or a social process that is seen as more intuitive or graspable than what it purports to represent. Building on perhaps the signature publication in this sub-field, Neal et al. connect the over-researched places to what Gilroy (1987) called the ‘symbolic location’ of places. In this case of over-researched places, certain places, events, or practices have this symbolic allure or charm. In this section, to start the chapter, I take three of the most clear and insightful articles on over-research—outlining what they add and how they define the discussion of over-research, before pushing forward and grappling with the missing why. I argue that this comes from analysing over-research separately from research fatigue.

Clark (2008) addresses researchers’ perspectives of over-research. Sukarieh and Tannock (2013) examine over-research from the perspective of those being researched. Meanwhile, Neal et al.’s (2016) discussions of Hackney outline the specific place that can be over-researched. Together, these three represent the state of the art on over-research but there are still many unexplained aspects: the relationship between over-research and research fatigue or allocating to what extent over-research is a failure of researchers themselves or research, in general. That is, how individual or structural a phenomenon is over-research? Or, to use more phenomenological language, to what extent is over-research a result of the ‘thrownness’ of current academic political economy or can it be seen as a voluntary action?

Clark (2008)

Over-research literature often outlines personal tips for researchers so that they can fairly manage unequal relationships of power with those researched: specifically, between the researcher and those researched. Researchers can be conscious of how much of interviewees’ time they take up and how much more ‘extraction’ takes place when rephrasing and representing someone’s lifeworld into academic-ese. More rarely, authors like Clark (2008) outline the effects of research fatigue and over-research on the research process.

Social research that seeks to describe and explain the world inevitably brings researchers into contact with people. Without these people—‘research subjects’—social and qualitative research would be impossible. Therefore, getting the right relationship between researchers and research subjects is a fundamental part of research. While many resources outline this from the perspective of the researcher (i.e. how to get better data in a more ethical way), Clark grapples with how those researched can experience research fatigue and over-research. Due to this focus on how researchers can deal with over-researched cases and participants, Clark is as concerned with ‘research fatigue’ as with over-research. As often in discussions of over-research (see more in the following, and this volume), there is a general tendency to elide or at least muddy the distinction between research fatigue and over-research. Here, over-research is a claim made by research subjects suffering from research fatigue, that is, ‘we’re being over-researched’. However, there are good reasons to hold these two separately.

First, and centrally, over-research can occur without research fatigue. A common example of over-research points out that much social psychology research tends to be with those nearby the researchers. With research often carried out in universities, participants are often reasonably well-educated, well-off, 18–22-year-old undergraduates from a specific class profile, willing to trade an hour of their time in return for some token recompense, often at the same university of the researchers. Yet, just because students and those living near research-intensive universities are over-represented in these studies, it is not always the case that those being studied feel over-whelmed and burdened by their participation—indeed, there is often a steady stream of these ready and willing volunteers. It may even be that overcoming research fatigue can actually help exacerbate the problems of over-research. Clark mentions the lack of change that can result from research projects on hard-pressed groups. Here, overcoming the resistance of research subjects can result in even more research being carried out—overcoming research fatigue can result in over-research.

According to Clark (2008: 955–956), research fatigue is ‘a demonstration of reluctance toward continuing engagement with an existing project, or a refusal to engage with any further research’. Clark (2008: 960–961) mentions the possibilities for overcoming research fatigue, including researchers offering the possibility of ‘change’—some sort of a material difference in the circumstances of research subjects. Even though this offer of change can be problematic and difficult to fulfil, overcoming research fatigue can even result in more research: over-over-research, if you like. The better researchers and research subjects can get over the fatigue of persistent research encounters, the more research and researchers can mine the same seam of research. Dealing with research fatigue then can be a way to more deeply exploit and extract data from research subjects: akin to fracking participants. In contrast, overcoming over-research involves dealing with the conditions that give rise to the centralisation and focusing in/bunching up of research and hence necessitates a more structural critique of the current state of research.

Over-research is broader than only the fatigue of participants and has implications beyond specific research subjects suffering from research fatigue. These implications include research subjects in general (though this is a sufficient cause for over-research to become a problem), the quality of the research itself, and the narrowing of the expectations of researchers. While there are resources on research fatigue, over-research is a more problematic phenomena, and, due to this more deeply sedimented character, is less likely to be overcome in a voluntaristic manner: that is through better research and training of researchers. Over-research is deeply embedded, and while research fatigue can be pervasive, it is revealed in particularities. Over-research, in contrast, is revealed structurally.

Clark remains focused on ana...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Over-research: what, why, when, where, how?
• 1 Towards a theory of over-researched places
• 2 Overcoming over-research? Reflections from Sydney’s ‘Petri dish’
• 3 Epistemological, decolonial, and critical reflections in constructing research in former Yugoslavia
• 4 Ghosts of researchers past, present, and future in Mumbai
• 5 La Duchère, Lyon, France: an over-researched place that ignores itself
• 6 ‘Research has killed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’: navigating the over-researched field of the West Bank
• 7 Overlooked cities and under-researched Bharatpur, Nepal
• 8 When over-researchedness is invisibilised in bibliographic databases: insights from a case study about the Arctic region
• 9 Confessions of an ‘academic tourist’: reflections on accessibility, trust, and research ethics in the ‘Grandhotel Cosmopolis’
• 10 Locating climate change research: the privileges and pitfalls of choosing over- and under-researched places
• Index