Composite Method

This paper explores how race comes to matter in the practice of police facial composite drawing. The confidential nature of criminal investigations prevented us from using research material collected through observations of police practices. The authors developed an experimental film project in collaboration with two forensic artists to illuminate the production of (visual) differences in the context of facial composite drawing. We recorded the process using a variety of technologies to produce different materializations of the drawing event. The experimental setting created a reflexive space for all participants, albeit not in the same way. Tinkering with the materials generated allowed us to analyze the enactment and slipperiness of race in practice. This paper combines written text with experimental montage to address three different practices through which race takes shape in the process of making facial composite drawings: 1) touching as describing; 2) layering and surfacing; and 3) articulating the common.

Ndibeer and Ned Ride Again

This article tells a dialogical story and describes a process of mutual learning and embodiment over the course of a long therapeutic relationship. The article maps the development of relationship, between my inner voices, my supervisors and those of my client, where stories of self and other are articulated, elaborated and externalised using the metaphor of a "bundle of treasures". A self-reflexive process of personal and professional mapping, using the hierarchical model of the Coordinated Management of Meaning, is described. In a recursive and isomorphic process, supervisory and therapeutic conversations further elaborate these stories, and through joint action, enable the creation of a liminal, reflexive space, a Fifth Province position, a cauldron of creativity where practice-based theory can develop. This process will be illustrated as it arises in the story of relationship and the process of therapy, so this narrative invites the reader to become an active participant in a never-ending process where theory becomes a live metaphor in the quest for being human

A comprehensive cognitive-perceptual model of analysis for contextually determined components of a conceptualized term

The authors analyze major features of complex multidisciplinary analysis models of the recipient’s perceptual capacity related to desobjectifying contextually determined transdisciplinary borrowing of newly emerging components within a semantic hierarchy. Critical analysis and comparison are applied to some alternative approaches in linguistic studies of transdisciplinary terminologization. There is a role revealed, which belongs to the cognitive-perceptual aspect in the respective knowledge field. The comprehensive phenomenon of component transgression within the meaning hierarchy is viewed from different angles: metaphoric and metonymic explication, and from the stance of conceptual integration of mental spaces and grammatical constructions of implicit meaning generation. The semantic foundations of the frame & semantic model of the borrowing theory serve a prototype of a comprehensive analytical model relevant not only in Linguistics, yet in other humanities (Literature, Psychology, Sociology). The comprehensive method of bottom-up analysis in studying explication of contextually determined overtones (forced reinterpretation of terms and terminoids) implies desobjectification of the semantic hierarchy at several levels. The analysis suggests that standard linguistic mechanisms can be employed through deautomation in the said cognitive modeling function. Reactivating a prototypical mental image within a new reflexive space is viewed as the most effective way of explicating the respective components.

On Fermat-Torricelli Problem in Frechet Spaces

We study the Fermat-Torricelli problem (FTP) for Frechet space X, where X is considered as an inverse limit of projective system of Banach spaces. The FTP is defined by using fixed countable collection of continuous seminorms that defines the topology of X as gauges. For a finite set A in X consisting of n distinct and fixed points, the set of minimizers for the sum of distances from the points in A to a variable point is considered. In particular, for the case of collinear points in X, we prove the existence of the set of minimizers for FTP in X and for the case of non collinear points, existence and uniqueness of the set of minimizers are shown for reflexive space X as a result of strict convexity of the space.

The Challenges of Conducting Qualitative Research on “couples” in Abusive Intimate Partner Relationships Involving Substance Use

Undertaking qualitative dyad or couple interviews involving intimate partner abuse and substance use presents considerable ethical, safeguarding, and theoretical challenges throughout the research process from recruitment to conducting interviews and analysis. These challenges and how they were managed are outlined using the experience from a qualitative study of 14 heterosexual “couples” that explored the complex interplay between intimate partner abuse and substance use. Managing these challenges for participants, their families, and researchers included the use of safeguarding protocols and procedures to manage risk and the provision of clinical support for experienced researchers. Researchers often felt drawn into the conflicts and complex dynamics of opposing accounts from the male and females’ relationship which could be emotionally and methodologically taxing. Researchers discussing their analysis and felt experiences with each other provided a reflexive space to manage emotions and stay close to the theoretical underpinnings.

Restorying lived lives in educational research: Storyboarding as a creative space for scholarly thinking in narrative analysis

Traditionally, a storyboard has been used in the film-making industry as part of the preparatory process of film production. In this article, we focus on its use as a creative space for analysis in educational research. Specifically, we make visible our learnings, as social science researchers, about storyboarding as an imaginative, tangible, and reflexive space for narrative inquirers to work with the complexity of restorying lived lives in educational research. We draw on Sibonelo's reflections on using the storyboard in his doctoral dissertation and offer our subsequent dialogues on his reflections as the data for this article. Our learnings indicate that storyboarding opens-up researcher subjectivity in the restorying process. In engaging critical friends, it serves as a space for the mediation of multiple perspectives and meanings of participants' lived lives and is an imaginative space in which to filter creatively large amounts of field texts. We thus suggest that storyboarding enhances verisimilitude in the restorying process.

‘Now that I know what you’re about’: black feminist reflections on power in the research relationship

Feminists have identified reflexivity as a particularly incisive tool for navigating shifting power dynamics, using it to draw attention to how a researcher’s positionality informs every aspect of the research process, from development of the research question to interactions with research participants. In this article, I describe my reflections as a black feminist researcher conducting research with black women. I examine the unexpected ways in which power can manifest during the research process, complicating the theoretical advice offered by institutional ethics board and feminist methodology textbooks. Intersectionality serves as a useful tool to tease out these dilemmas and though it cannot preempt or solve all challenges, it provides reflexive space for exploring such dilemmas and a tool for navigating power in the research process.

Pregnant Embodiment and Field Research

Feminist scholars have long argued for embodied reflexivity that involves accounting for how embodiment shapes qualitative field research as an intersubjective process. This chapter draws on ethnographic research with sixty-four low-income men of color who participated in a US government-funded fatherhood program conducted when the author was visibly pregnant with her first child. It analyzes pregnant embodiment as a strategy for facilitating rapport and credibility with socially dissimilar respondents and contributes to an epistemology of embodiment that attends to how researchers’ bodily states and experiences are sources of both data and analysis in field research. It concludes with insights generated from the project about how attention to embodiment is a valuable and illuminating reflexive space from which to better understand and empathize with respondents.