Power, Culture and Situated Research Methodology

Autobiography, Field, Text

Cecilie Basberg Neumann, Iver B. Neumann

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9783319592169
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319592176
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Phenomenology in Philosophy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores the extent to which our lives become an important underlying context for data production. Drawing on insights from Gestalt psychology, feminism and post-structuralism, it discusses how to situate yourself in the different phases of research.

© The Author(s) 2018

Cecilie Basberg Neumann and Iver B. NeumannPower, Culture and Situated Research Methodology10.1007/978-3-319-59217-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Cecilie Basberg Neumann¹ and Iver B. Neumann²

(1)

Oslo and Akershus University College, Oslo, Norway

(2)

Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, Oslo, Norway

Cecilie Basberg Neumann (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Iver B. Neumann

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

We start our venture by introducing the tree phases of the research process and the different ways in which they invoke our situatedness in the pre-field-, in-field- and post-field phase. Inspired by feminist objections to value-free research, we ground our understanding of situatedness in Sandra Harding’s concept “strong objectivity”. This concept opts for transparency through the researcher’s context awareness, as well as the researchers situated self-awareness throughout the three phases of the research process. To further our aim of doing situated research, we argue that the Gestalt traditions concepts, and phenomenological understanding of human beings as fundamentally relational, may provide us with valuable tools in order to do situated research in practice, complementary to techniques accounted for in manuals on qualitative research methods.

Keywords

SituatednessStrong objectivityKnowledgeGestalt traditionProfessional research ideals

End Abstract

There is no such thing as first contact, for we always come to situations with expectations about it already installed. A student who enters a field to interview people about a specific subject, or spends time immersed in fieldwork, will have required a certain amount of basic knowledge of the field in which she is about to interact. When she has chosen her specific subject of research, she will have to be certain that at least a part of her research questions can be answered through qualitative interviews or ethnographic methods. She will have to plan interview questions and conversations prior to her actual interactions with her informants, as she must decide in advance on at least some of the topics she is going to explore in the field. Before she enters the field, she must be as aware of what she is looking for as possible, and she must have clarified her prejudices and prior understandings of the field. If her chosen method is qualitative interviews, the interview questions or interview guide will have been planned and written down in advance and ought to have been rehearsed in order for her to avoid fumbling with papers, pencils, microphones and tape recorders during the interview. The student may have learnt that questions can be formulated in many different ways, and that questions which invite a yes or no answer should be avoided. She has probably also learnt that interview questions evoke different levels of meaning in the informant and his relationship with colleagues, friends, family, organization, institution and structures, different levels of meaning that are important to distinguish or keep analytically apart when she analyses her material. She has learnt that it is wise to be a keen listener who is seen to respond with encouraging signals such as nodding, attentive body language, saying “mmm” and “yes”. This may help the informant to talk, memorize and reflect on the specific questions more freely. But she may also have learnt that if she gives too many encouraging signals she risks that the informant will take control of the interview situation. If this happens, she may experience problems not only with asking critical and challenging questions, but also with uncomfortable questions, and she may have to end the interview without having exhausted her prepared list of questions. In addition, she has (fingers crossed) learned that she is the responsible party in the interview, and that she, qua her role as researcher, should stay in the background as much as possible. She is there not to talk about herself, but to help bring out the informant’s knowledge and experience on specific questions and topics.

This book is not an attempt to challenge these and numerous other pieces of good advices on data collection techniques, research strategies and suggestions to preparations and approaches prior to and during work in the field. This kind of knowledge is a fundamental part of basic research knowledge. Still, we strongly feel that there is so much more that needs to be said and done. In addition to mastering specific research techniques, there is also another logic present. This is what we may call the dialogical logic, which is fundamentally relational and deeply human (Holstein and Gubrium 1995; Staunes and Søndergaard 2005). It is impossible to have a conversation with someone, to conduct an interview or being present in a field, without being personally involved in one way or another. This book is an invitation to reflect on how these dialogical and relational aspects affect or interact with the three main levels of research. There are, first, field preparations and choice of topic, theoretical perspectives and data gathering techniques. We call this the pre-field stage. The pre-field stage bleeds into the way we create empirical data, and our understandings and analyses hereof. We call this the in-field stage. Finally, the two previous stages connect with how we write texts based on these data, principally but not exclusively through note-taking. We call this the post-field stage. In practice, a researcher always keeps an eye on the phases to come, and often continues work on previous phases as she has moved on, for example, by adjusting There is recursivity between the three phases, in the sense that one will adjust a theoretical perspective or collect complementary data during the writing phase. Still, it makes obvious sense to treat the three phases as analytically separate.

Reported research findings will be the result of the fact that the researcher has moved through these three stages, and in order for the research to be as good and as accountable as possible, it is imperative that the researcher should pay attention to the way she conducts her research. By discussing and problematizing the epistemological assumptions implicitly made in the large swathes of research literature which take for granted that the researcher should be “neutral” and “withdrawn” (Haraway 1991; Brigg and Bleiker 2010), and by addressing explicit situations that the researcher may encounter or be confronted with during the research process, we hope that this book will succeed in demonstrating that all research is situated, and also in suggesting how this situatedness may be dealt with in the three stages of the research process.

Our point of departure for reflecting on how research is situated and how the researcher may situate herself is the so-called Gestalt tradition. Specifically, we relate to the founders of Gestalt psychology and their observations and thinking about humans as fundamentally relational. We are also inspired by some of the Gestalt therapy’s relational terms and techniques regarding human interaction within the therapeutically conditioned conversation, for here we have an arena that is similar to the research interview and that has been analyzed in much more depth, which should mean that there lurk lessons to be learnt for the social scientist. Our intention is not, however, to create a new methods book for the social sciences grounded in the concepts of Gestalt psychology and the techniques of Gestalt therapy. The intention is rather to show how the Gestalt psychological thinking and concepts may provide inspiring and relevant tools for researchers in the social sciences. We relate Gestalt therapy to interview and field situations, to the process of reflection on collected empirical data, and to the process of doing/writing social scientific analyses. The three stages of the research process each presents the researcher with the challenge of situatedness. The pre-field phase calls for autobiographical work: how did I end up researching this topic, asking these questions, applying these theories? The in-field phase raises the question of how the pre-field experience impinges on what is observed, how it is observed, with what results for data creation. The post-field writing phase demands that we, as the creator of the text, situate ourselves, be that as hidden or present writer subjects, and if the latter, how present.

Gestalt psychology emerged as part of the philosophical movement called phenomenology. Phenomenology is an independent research tradition within the social sciences, perhaps primarily in anthropology but also within qualitative sociology. For people working within this tradition, this book will have the added attraction of making the acquaintance with a prodigal daughter called Gestalt therapy, which departed from academic Gestalt psychology prior to the Second World War and is only now being brought back in this book.

Our aim is to apply some of these Gestalt insights in a constructivist understanding of knowledge production. ¹ We try to get at how to make our own data production as transparent as possible, and how to connect our understanding of situatedness to ways of conducting ethically sound research.

The researcher’s professional ethos

Our claim is that the researcher, regardless of how well prepared she is for an interview or for field work, cannot avoid forming relations with her informants. The very idea that she should be able to stand on the outside of the relation, or not engage in any relation at all, and simply be a neutral and objective observer that would not influence her informants and the field of research, is, we would argue, founded on false assumptions (see Harding 1991; Smith 2005). Furthermore, since human interaction is by definition open ended, the researcher cannot know what will happen during an interview or in the field beforehand, no matter how well prepared she is. The need for improvisation is therefore always there during data creation. If everything was simply there for the picking, social research would be like picking mushrooms or collecting firewood. It is not. Data is created, not collected.

This simple insight has wide-reaching implications. The informant will be affected by the presence of the researcher, influenced by her way of being, impressed by her way of posing questions. In some situations, the researcher may be forced to alter or modify her interview and field preparations. She may have to begin the interview differently than what was planned. She will be challenged intellectually and emotionally in ways she may not have anticipated. Informants will frequently, and often out of the blue, ask for her personal point of view on a specific question, ask her to comment on a difficult situation in the field or criticize one of the topics of the interview or angles of a question.

In situations like these, many researchers and students will experience that they depart from or even break with some poorly defined ideals for the professional researcher implying the normative “silent”, “neutral”, “you should remain in the background” ideal attached to the researcher’s ethos, that probably stems from the quantitatively oriented social sciences and their methods suggestions (Justesen and Mik-Meyer 2012; Holstein and Gubrium 1997). Often this translates into the ideal of being “objective” in the interview situation, or at least appearing to be objective, and not to “influence” the situation too much, neither through unnecessary verbal expressions nor expansive dressing, and bringing in too much of oneself by expressing personal opinions about specific topics. We do not disagree that it is often crucial to keep one’s own opinions, personal experiences, likes and dislikes in the background, in order to generate good empirical data (Silverman 2005, p. 256). We do observe, however, that an interview or the researcher’s presence in the field is always already an irregularity and a provocation. It is this relational and realistic understanding that should be the point of departure for discussions of what may follow between researcher and informant, and not some ontologically mistaken idea of the researcher somehow not being present.

The researcher has no choice but to bring herself and her own perspectives, history and points of view with her into the situation. Contrary to what many seem to believe, this situation is also “hermeneutically productive” to paraphrase Hans-Georg Gadamer. Understanding and interpreting social phenomena are in fundamental ways about the awkward meeting of different standpoints, that of the researcher and those of her informants. The contrast between the two makes both parties mutually aware, exactly because the situation is extraordinary. When “the other” appears to be different from me, it means at the same time that I become aware of my own particularity. The ideal of objectivity thereby runs counter to the possible (Haraway 1991).

A second characteristic of hermeneutic productivity is how it is exactly by twisting questions and taking advantage of situations that the researcher may be able to extract the most relevant data. It is right to strive towards bringing out the other person’s viewpoints and perspectives, but the way in which it happens is precisely not by staying in the background, but instead by stressing certain topics, guiding the conversation towards the research questions, bringing out the informant’s opinions by alluding to one’s own and so on. It follows that good research is dependent on a completely different—or, more politely put, a more complex and socially situated—type of data gathering than what is recommended by many books on methods, and than is performed or otherwise accounted for in numerous academic books and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Pre-field Autobiographic Situatedness, In-field Situatedness, Post-field Text Situatedness
• 3. A Century of Thinking About Situatedness: The Gestalt Tradition
• 4. Conceptual Inspiration from the Gestalt Tradition
• 5. Interview Techniques
• 6. Pre-field Autobiographic Situatedness and Post-field Textual Situatedness
• 7. Philosophy of Science: Two Ways of Going About Situatedness
• 8. Conclusion: Culture, Power, Ethics
• Backmatter