scholarly journals Intervention, autonomy and power in polarised societies

Author(s):  
Corinna Jentzsch

The chapter builds on fieldwork conducted in rural Mozambique on community mobilisation against insurgent violence during the country’s civil war (1976-1992) to reflect upon some of the unintended consequences of fieldwork in polarised societies. It focuses on the ways in which the autonomy of both the researcher and the researched may be affected during the research process. In analysing the simultaneous empowerment and disempowerment of research participants, the chapter discusses the challenges raised around issues of power and neutrality during fieldwork and suggests that conflict research needs to be understood as a form of intervention in local affairs.

Author(s):  
Althea-Maria Rivas

This vignette explore the ways in which race and gender can influence the research process, the experience of the researcher, and the perceptions of the research participants and communities through short narratives on fieldwork conducted in Afghanistan and Burundi. It ends with a few reflections on the need for more discussion within academic circles about intersectionality and research praxis.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carly Drake ◽  
Scott K. Radford

Purpose This study aims to consider how research methodologies and methods can afford holistic inquiry into gendered embodied consumption. Noting the salience of gender in past and present discourse surrounding the body and building on poststructuralist feminist hermeneutic philosophy and practice, the authors introduce a novel methodological framework situated within three considerations borne of the current socio-cultural landscape: the politics of embodiment, embodied identity and intersectionality. Design/methodology/approach To assist scholars and practitioners in interpreting themes of gendered embodiment in textual data surrounding consumption topics, the authors orient the framework around three principles of listening, questioning and hospitality. This framework fosters embodied empathy by linking the researcher’s body to those of research participants. To illustrate the method, the authors interpret consumption narratives extracted from semi-structured interviews with 26 women-identified recreational runners on the topics of embodiment, sport and media. Findings The interpretations of gendered consumption narratives show that using the principles of listening, questioning and hospitality invites an understanding of consumers as multifaceted, contradictory and agentic. The authors argue that consumers’ everyday experiences are often simple and quiet but embedded in history wherein bodies are both biological and inescapably social. Originality/value The methodological framework allows both the researcher’s and research participants’ embodiment to play a role in the research process. It also illuminates the entanglement of embodiment and consumption in a fraught, politicized context. The authors show that by listening to consumers, questioning their narratives and traditional interpretations thereof and inviting consumers to feel comfortable and heard, researchers can see what other approaches may overlook.


2003 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carole Truman

The role of research ethics committees has expanded across the UK and North America and the process of ethical review has become re-institutionalised under proposals for research governance proposed by government. Ethics committees have gained a powerful role as gatekeepers within the research process. Underpinning the re-constitution of ethical guidelines and research governance, are a range of measures which protect institutional interests, without necessarily providing an effective means to address the moral obligations and responsibilities of researchers in relation to the production of social research. Discussion of research ethics from the standpoint of research participants who in this paper, are service users within health and social care, provides a useful dimension to current debate. In this paper I draw upon experiences of gaining ethical approval for a research study which focused on user participation within a community mental health service. I discuss the strategies used to gain ethical approval and the ‘formal concerns’ raised by the ethics committee. I then describe and discuss ethical issues which emerged from a participants’ perspective during the actual research as it was carried out. These experiences are analysed using aspects of institutional ethnography which provides a framework to explore how the experiences of research participants are mediated by texts which govern the processes of research production. The paper highlights incongruities between the formal ethical regulation of research, and the experiences of research participants in relation to ethical concerns within a research process.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-139
Author(s):  
Magdalena Wojciechowska

The aim of this paper is to shed light on how various interactional and interpretational contexts arising from specific researcher—research participants relationship established in the course of doing ethnographic study on sensitive, and thus often enough resistant to immediate cognition, phenomenon, namely, lesbian parenting in Poland, as well as different ways of embracing these, may factor into the research process. Drawing on specific dilemmas I encountered while doing the study at hand—from engaging a hard-to-reach population that, in a sense, wished to be reached, and the consequences thereof; through being pushed out of the comfort zone as the women under study, in the wake of becoming acquainted with the analysis I offered, “switched” from narrating their “in-orderto motives” to reflecting on the “because motives” behind their actions; to contextualizing emotions arising as my response to experiencing the issues they face (on a daily basis), to name a few—my goal here is to discuss how different ways of collecting and analyzing data—in the context of developing rapport with the women under study—have had an impact on conceptualizing and (re)framing the data at hand.


Author(s):  
Sergei Filippovich Volodin

The subject of this research is the questions of motivating the workers of Tula Cartridge Plant during the civil war. Based on methodology of economic and social microhistory, the author analyzes the practice of using methods of war communism and monetary measures to encourage worker of Tula Cartridge Plant in accomplishment of strenuous government contracts. The research results can be valuable in training management professionals in the context of comprehension of the phenomenon of national economy through the prism of social practices, particular administrative experience in crisis conditions. Writing company’s history necessitates the inclusion of methodology of economic and social microhistory into the research process. Scientific analysis of life of the company as a holistic socioeconomic phenomenon allows determining corporate practices that are essential for understanding the functionality of national economy in a specific historical period. The conclusion is made that objectively, the differentiated plant production significantly adjusted to mobilization regime of war communism using special mechanisms. Among them is the unlimited efficiency wage, non-tariff ways of incentivizing skilled workers, and determination of the urgent work areas with accord wages. At the same time, the war communism method of mobilization of industrial production implemented specific measures of financial incentives for workers. It included the guaranteed minimum of means for each employee, bargain-collective forms of bonuses, and simultaneously, directive allocation of major operations and byworks with due remuneration. The contradictory combination of all these methods of financial incentives ensured a specific effectiveness criterion reflected in the material items of military consumption.


2002 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 202-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah von Hapsburg ◽  
Elizabeth D. Peña

This tutorial provides a review of auditory research conducted with monolingual and bilingual speakers of Spanish and English. Based on a functional view of bilingualism and on auditory research findings showing that the bilingual experience may affect the outcome of auditory research, we discuss methods for improving descriptions of linguistically diverse research participants. The review delves into how the bilingual experience can affect auditory research outcomes and discusses ways in which experimental design can be adjusted when bilingual or monolingual participants are used for research needs. The goal of the tutorial is to increase awareness about the complexities of using bilinguals in auditory research, thereby improving the quality of auditory research involving bilingual research participants.


1995 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 191-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Remenyi ◽  
Brian Williams

A prerequisite for conducting sound academic research in information systems is to understand the research process – how to identify a suitable research problem, how to create a theoretical conjecture and hypotheses, how to collect data and how to test and analyse them. An appreciation of these issues is essential before any professional research may be conducted either for general academic publication or for a higher degree. This paper discusses, in general terms, the nature of academic research and how the scientific method is used in practice. It identifies three major categories of research and explains the steps which the research needs to follow if a claim is to be made that a significant addition has been made to the collection of knowledge. Easy to follow flow charts showing the necessary stages in the research process are supplied.


2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (8) ◽  
pp. 743-753 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathy Charmaz ◽  
Linda Liska Belgrave

This article examines qualitative data in an era of neoliberalism and focuses on the place of data in grounded theory studies. Neoliberal values of individual responsibility, self-sufficiency, competition, efficiency, and profit have entered the conduct of research. Neoliberalism fosters (a) reifying quantitative logical-deductive research, (b) imposing surveillance of types and sources of data, (c) marginalizing inductive qualitative research, and (d) limiting access to data in grounded theory studies. Grounded theory relies on data and resists current efforts to abandon data. The method resides in the space between reifying and rejecting data. Data allow us to learn from the stories of those left out and permits research participants to break silences. Data can help us look underneath and beyond our privileges, and alter our views. Grounded theory is predicated on data, but how researchers regard and render data depends on which version of the method they adopt. We propose developing a strong methodological self-consciousness to learn how we affect the research process and to counter the subtle effects of neoliberalism.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 160940691986324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lang ◽  
Catherine Laing ◽  
Nancy Moules ◽  
Andrew Estefan

In this technological age, storytelling is moving from oral and written to digital formats, creating many methodological opportunities for researchers and practitioners. This article explores a specific genre of participatory media production, digital storytelling (DST), which could be a valuable research tool to describe, analyze, and understand the experiences of research participants. Digital stories (DS) are short movies that use images, videos, a voice-over, and various video editing techniques to share an important story from the participant’s life. In a health care setting, DS can be used as knowledge translation tools for education and advocacy, as data to be analyzed in the research process, or as a therapeutic intervention, in any combination, depending on the intent of the project. Although an increasing number of health-related research studies indicate using DST, or some variation of it, there is a glaring paucity of methodologically focused manuscripts in the health care literature. This article delineates and describes four primary phases of DST in a health care context as finding the story, telling the story, crafting the story, and sharing the story. Both the creative and technical considerations of DST facilitation are elucidated through specific examples and practical concepts. By drawing from diverse literature such as narratology, film, and psychotherapy, and exploring new creative tools and ideas to help research participants convey meaning, this article provides a starting point for qualitative researchers to explore the use of DST in their own contexts.


2020 ◽  
pp. 174462952092414
Author(s):  
Claire Kar Kei Lam ◽  
Jane Bernal ◽  
Janet Finlayson ◽  
Stuart Todd ◽  
Laurence Taggart ◽  
...  

Aim: This article explores ways of maximising engagement of intellectual disability staff as research participants, research advisers and research implementers. Method: The authors describe and reflect on a three-phased strategy in recruiting front-line staff ( n = 690) working for intellectual disability service providers ( n = 25) to participate in a UK-wide anonymous online survey about death, dying and bereavement. Results: Important elements in engaging participants were: involving stakeholders at all stages of the research process, which includes: building relationships with participating organisations; enlisting organisational management support at all levels; an attractive and well laid-out collection tool; a well-structured recruitment strategy; time and flexibility; and a varied and targeted dissemination strategy. However, the recruitment method had limitations, in particular around representativeness, bias and generalisability. Conclusions: Staff in intellectual disability services can be enthusiastic and invaluable research participants. Active engagement between researchers, participating organisations and stakeholder groups is key to ensuring involvement of intellectual disability staff with research.


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