The author as researcher

Simon at South America Bidsta has an interesting post on the relationship between the positioned individual and the ethnographic research they produce, noting drily that in “any other science, you might just call this ‘being transparent about one’s methods’”.

The post contains the challenge to reproduce the researcher’s exercise: to “write down ten things about ourselves–personal, political, demographic, academic or philosophical, that give an idea of who we are and where we come from, and that could influence how we carry out our research”. This challenge catches my attention for a number of reasons at present.  The main one of these is that I am involved in a group research project at work to which I am not contributing in the way I anticipated I would be able to contribute.  Tasks which I complete with ease in literary and cultural studies I find myself almost paralysed by in educational research.  Furthermore, a misconceived sense of responsibility towards my research partners also seems to retard the pace of my work.  (This is not to say that a sense of responsibility is in itself a bad idea, but rather that there’s something about the way in which I’m experiencing it that’s askew.)

So I’m up for completing Simon’s exercise with the slant that it’s a good time to reflect a little on how my own positioning as a researcher is affecting my contribution to this research project: I’m completing tasks quite different from those I thought I would when the project began.

1. My primary research values come from literary studies, which is very much about the individual alone with their texts and their ideas.  I feel challenged by projects that involve structures and referents that don’t mimic the literary studies research experience.
2. I am prone to the false expectation that I can internalise other disciplinary norms in the way I have my primary research field, when experience teaches me that this is not true.
3. I learn most effectively (and indeed, these days, it’s almost the only way I can learn) relationally and by connecting contexts: if I can’t understand how a thing or idea connects to another thing or idea I already know, then I’ll struggle to retain it.
4. I tend to give up if I can’t do something really well.
5. These days I do more writing than reading, more synthesising than creating and build more overviews than ground-up, original arguments.  These are things, therefore, to which I gravitate in research.
6. Even as I’m comfortable in the university, I struggle with some of the beliefs that underpin the existence of the academic community and the circulation of knowledge.  I prefer collaborative epistemologies to more traditional adversarial models.
7. Discussing ideas is a key way for me to build understanding of new knowledge and cement my relationship with other researchers, even as I wish I were more reticent in terms of how much verbalising I do.
8. As a younger researcher I was known for my enthusiasm, by which others were variously charmed or put off.  I rein it in rather more now.
9. I am articulate, which generally functions in my job as a cipher for confidence, although there are a number of research areas in which this appearance of confidence is illusory.
10. I tend to think that I lack the attack-dog single-mindedness and tenacity to be a first-class researcher in either literary studies or educational research, but I value in myself the qualities I believe I have instead.

Tagged as: reflection, research, the researcher