Preliminary Thoughts on Methodology: Reflexivity.
Although
each of the methodology chapters has a critical account of that methodology as
an introduction, I think it is useful to make a few preliminary remarks about
methodology in general.
In classic academic research written records,
published texts and archived materials and laboratory processes are examined
methodically. An account of this examination is then written and published
which contains full references to the locations of the sources of information.
Ideally the account also implies a critical appraisal of both the authority of
the sources of information and the methods of examination. The conceptual
frames through which the data produced is evaluated are also, ideally,
approached critically. The original materials and texts should be in the public
realm so that future researchers can re-examine them to challenge any
interpretations made.[1]
Behind this is an idea of progress through
disciplined discourse, by which the accumulated results - formal Western
knowledge - progresses to ever deeper and more accurate understandings of the
world. This ideal is more difficult to realise the further we get from
processes that are defined by laws of mathematics, including those of
probability. Even with this limitation a logical and open method of inquiry,
sometimes called scientific method, has been remarkably productive in
transforming our world within a few centuries. However the millenarial optimism
which accompanied the first waves of scientific and technological progress has
been jaded by the apparent inability of this potent form of rationalism to
solve fundamental issues of social justice, environmental degradation and
warfare. This disillusionment has led to the underlying assumptions and
practices of Enlightenment being seriously re-assessed in recent years - a
critical movement which some call Postmodernism.[2]
Phd research is made within this
historical and cultural context. Subjects deemed worthy of study leave their
records in archives. Here they are stored in an orderly way to allow access by
scholars and enthusiasts. One clear limit of Western knowledge is defined by
what is, and what is not included in these public archives.
There has existed a long controversy
between quantitative and qualitative social research methodology camps.[3]
Quantitative measurement appeared to be objective and scientific while
qualitative evaluations were contingent on the subjectivity of the researcher.
In recent years this simple opposition has broken down as it has been
recognised that even apparently objective data requires subjective selection,
interpretation and value judgement. On the other hand qualitative methods such
as oral history can access crucial information that may be unavailable in any
other way and may also be subjected to rigorous checks to ensure the validity
of key data.
The only quantitative method I used was content
analysis. The other methods I used can all be seen as qualitative. Before
discussing the specifics of methods used in the introduction to each chapter I
will discuss an issue that is key to qualitative research of all kinds. The
concepts of reflexivity may be a way of bringing qualitative methods to account
for themselves in a way that goes some way to satisfy the demands of scientific
method. This is generally a matter of questioning how the processes of research
and analysis have an effect on research outcomes. This whole process of
self-examination has become known as 'reflexivity'.
Tim May (1998) sees reflexivity as having
two dimensions: the endogenous and the referential.[4]
Endogenous reflexivity is the examination of the processes by which communities
constitute their social reality. This can refer to a community under study and
/or it can refer to the research community itself. For instance how the objects
of academic curiosity are constructed within broader ontological patterns.[5]
Referential reflexivity is the study of the relations between the person who
engages in the research and the persons or groups who are the focus of that
research. Tim May asks whether an expert coming into a situation for a short
period with alien motivations can hope to come to a reliable understanding of
the lifeworld under study. Peter Worsley (1997) points out that communities
have their own ontological structures of great subtlety and sophistication and
that these 'knowledges' are often not sufficiently appreciated.[6]
The researcher runs the risk of imposing ontological structures arbitrarily
from their own already dominant culture.
The social sciences have wished to emulate
the authority of physical sciences by maintaining a separation of subject and
object. This became known as the Positivist model, in which it was believed
that a complete knowledge could be gained of human life worlds solely by
systematic and objective methods of research. This led to a split in social
researches between the Positivists who favoured quantitative methods and those
others who used qualitative methods. Since the late 1980's the different values
and limitations of each approach have been recognised and increasingly integrated
within research programmes.[7]
Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu thinks a
reflexive practice will help to free intellectuals from 'their illusions - and
first of all from the illusion that they do not have any, especially about
themselves'.[8] One such
illusion he refers to is that academics have 'misplaced beliefs in illusory
freedoms'. More prosaically reflexivity might offer the possibility that, in
unveiling the determinants that surround any research, we might acquire a
relative freedom from such determinants.
Harold Garfinkel was the first person to
bring the need for a self-reflexive research practice to the attention of
social science in 1967.[9]
Garfinkel argued that the actions and statements within any field could only be
fully understood from within the context that they were produced. This signaled
a profound shift in the goals and status of social research, from monumental
universal truths to something more dynamic in which 'truth' or validity could
be contingent on both time and space.
By the 1980's reflexivity was interpreted
in terms of mapping research activity against a linguistic background. The
researcher was still invisible and there was no analysis of the interaction
between the two frames of meaning production. In 1971 Alvin Gouldner had pointed
out how ethnographers could be seen to be normalising cultural fields, a
critique which threatened to reveal the interests behind Western constructions
of knowledge and destabilise the dominant worldview.[10]
The academic myth of value neutrality was still strong. Gouldner was under no
illusions about the inertia that such radical reflexivity would meet. He
proposed that the only way forward was for the researcher to become a channel
for social change. It was not simply a matter of reforming the research process
but a question of 'how to live': "What is needed is a new praxis that
transforms the person." (Gouldner, 1971 p494)
The next development in reflexive practice
was the feminist critique of epistemology. Sandra Harding showed how science
could carry a male agenda and exclude female concerns.[11]
From this it was realised that it was not just the immediate relations between
researcher and researched that must be brought into question but much deeper
questions of cultural and class affiliation would need to be considered. This
argument has led to a call for a democratisation of intellectual discourse.
This would mean research that is more accountable, accessible, culturally
specific and open to local evaluation. This can lead to a deconstruction of
authorial authority on the one hand and to an enthusiasm for methodological
heterogeneity on the other. A range of approaches may be less likely to
railroad conclusions within simplistic or preconceived frames.[12]
This strategy is known as the 'triangulation' of methodologies and is the
strategy I have adopted in this research programme.[13]
Reflexivity in this thesis is addressed at
various stages. The reports on each research methodology are preceded by a
discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the methodology. In this sense
reflexivity is making the methodologies and the use I make of them more
transparent and accountable. The limitations of the truth they reveal are laid
bare.
The precedents of this research in my experience of artists'
collectives in the last twenty years follows this introduction. This account
implies that my intellectual frame of mind and indeed my commitment to do
this research has been forged out of a praxis, my involvement in these sites
of cultural production.
Footnotes:
[1] See: L.B, Archer, Course
on Research Methods,
(RCA London 1996); and
Christopher
Frayling, Research in Art and Design, (Vol 1 no 1 Royal College of Art Research Papers
RCA London 1994/95)
[2] Many questions regarding
this conception of the rational will be addressed in the discussion of
Habermas' theories, which follow.
[3] A. Brymann, Quantity and
Quality in Social Research (Routledge London 1988)
[4] Tim May, 'Reflexivity in the
Age of Reconstructive Social Science' in International Journal of Social
Research Methodology,
Theory and Practice
(Vol 1 No 1, January - March 1998)
[5] Pierre Bourdieu provides a
classic study with his Homo Academicus, (Polity 1988)
[6] Peter Worsley, Knowledges:
what different people make of the world, (Profile Books 1997)
[7] A. Brymann, Quantity and
Quality in Social Research (Routledge 1988)
[8] Pierre Bourdieu, The
Rules of Art: genesis and structure of the literary field, (Polity Press 1996 p195)
[9] Harold Garfinkel.
Studies in Ethnomethodology, (Prentice-Hall 1967)
[11] Sandra Harding, Whose
Science? Whose Knowledge? thinking from women's lives, (O.U.P. 1991 p149-51)
[12] A. Fontana, 'Ethnographic
Trends in the Postmodern Era' In D.R. Dickens and A. Fontana, eds. Postmodernism
and Social Enquiry
(U.C.L. Press 1994)
[13] David Deacon, Alan Brymann
and Natalie Fenton, 'Collision or Collusion?: a discussion and case history of
the unplanned triangulation of quantitative and qualitative research methods', The
International Journal of Social Research Methodology, Theory and Practice (Vol 1 No1 January - March
1998 p47)