Understanding Research (20 page)

In light of the above practicalities and their underlying cultural and institutional dimensions, before moving on, a further word on research identity politics in and beyond the printed word.

Whilst researchers move between specific research methods and broader disciplines, others do specialize. The level of disinterest or ferocity with which researchers, individually and as communities, critique other practices or defend their own are socioculturally encoded. Sometimes these codes are evident as behavioural traits (for example, the cut and thrust of a research seminar Q&A), writing tone (qualified to matter-of-fact to polemical), or as the statement of intent (for example, for projects looking to do a ‘critical analysis’). Sometimes these codes surface when certain sorts of research go public – in scholarly or lay circles – as underlying assumptions or misapplications become subject to scrutiny by its critics (see Eberstadt 1995). Current debates around global warming and climate change (see
Box 2.2
) are a case in point. The role played by researchers ranking physical morphologies and attributes along
racialized lines during the colonial era is another example (see Canales 2009, Chowdhry and Nair 2002, Smith 1999). Newspaper rubrics on what counts as ‘bad science’ is another popular rendition, if not exposé, of these codes.

Whilst most research in social science and humanities faculties is undertaken and assessed on an individual basis, the research process is not hermetically sealed from these sorts of identity politics. Recall, no researcher is an island; research is an activity that is inherently an ‘intersubjective’ endeavour, embedded in social relationships and institutions and their respective systems of recognition and reward. None of these stand still over time either. One of the areas where a lot of double-speak and contradictory messages occur is about the pros and cons of research that is strictly disciplinary, interdisciplinary, or multidisciplinary. The gap between theory in terms of rhetoric and everyday practicalities of research contexts in this respect can be pronounced. It inflects the literature review element in particular ways as well.

Let me illustrate this point by way of some common miscommunications that can occur between supervisors and research students along these lines. Some of these stem from differences in training based on research traditions, countries, or even departments. Others are based on varying receptions of numerous and contradictory cues from more diffuse sources: our classmates (where ‘gossip, rumours, and fact’ intermingle), departmental seminars, out to funding agencies and educational watch-dogs. These days, researchers are often negotiating varying ideas about how interdisciplinary research deserves special recognition and the assumption that a research question approached from multiple disciplinary approaches must, by sheer numbers, be better than a single disciplinary approach. The converse is also a pressure in those settings where one disciplinary way holds sway.

Wilson has referred to interdisciplinary work as
consilience
-the ‘jumping together of knowledge’ across disciplines ‘to create a common groundwork of explanation’ (Wilson 1998: 8). Wilson proposes that a merging of the natural sciences and the social sciences could equip future humankind with the analytical and predictive capacity to identify inherent principles underlying the entire human endeavour, and suggests that interdisciplinarity is the most promising path to scientific advancement and intellectual awareness. C. P. Snow, in his turn, pleads for a cessation of hostilities between the arts and sciences for comparable reasons (Snow 1993 [1959]). From another vantage point, Donna Haraway (1990), Sandra Harding (1998b), Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999), and others, have looked to refine an empirical mode of research between different sorts of approaches to the gathering and analysis of research material – data in its generic understanding.

Most of those looking to investigate their object of inquiry in inter- or multi-disciplinary ways, however, have a slightly less bold objective than the formulations of a unifying theory of human behaviour or society; or hybrid methodology for that matter. Both terms imply fields of study that cross, link up, or combine traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought; based on shifting priorities, emerging professions, or disciplinary/institutional realignments that merge disciplines once housed in separate departments. Notably the terms have earned much wider usage, such as when applied to new professions (for example, socio-biology, science and technology studies, internet studies) and to older fields such as psychiatry where the professional must have advanced credentials in several fields of
study – a medical degree to start with. Attempts to consciously forge interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, or even ‘transdisciplinary’ research across existing disciplines by applying a battery of mixed methods approaches, come and go out of favour.

Because target audiences and literature bases are often the sub-text to why such attempts often come adrift, the ‘lively but enervating’ tension’ referred to on page 12 of
Chapter 1
also resides in the trade-off that has to be made between the exclusiveness of disciplinarian urges (less is more) and the inclusive ideals of inter/multidisciplinary work (complexity is everything). The need to hone the focus of a research question notwithstanding, moving beyond strictly set disciplinary boundaries brings interesting and encouraging results despite protestations to the contrary. Indeed, many areas of research – communication and media studies, women’s studies, and even area studies – are interdisciplinary by nature in that they combine substantive – theoretical and practical – methodological knowledge and research practices from various disciplines.

Other models of interdisciplinarity include research undertaken by teams of researchers drawn from different disciplines or by one researcher working beyond his or her discipline in order to engage intellectually with another discipline. Within these models, there is a continuum that ranges from a confrontation or dialogue between two or more disciplines to address a particular issue, or to a full integration of theories, concepts and methods across a wide range of approaches.

Some suggest that the natural complexity of questions asked in the social sciences and humanities, means that research, in the past and today, is increasingly multiplex in nature and thereby requires a multi-pronged approach. One discipline alone is not capable of tackling themes or issues that involve a diverse set of actors, institutions and social, cultural, biological, technological and political relationships; recent debates around the form and substance of climate change being a case in point.

As I noted earlier in this chapter, the point of researching the literature as you consider the approach you eventually adopt, where you want to call ‘home’ in (inter)-disciplinary terms, the literature-base for the inquiry, is to inform and so guide you in the formulation and execution of the research question.

To bring this chapter to a close, the recapitulation of key points to bear in mind covers more than one research location, intradisciplinary forms of deference, and accepted wisdoms about which works (and authors) do or do not warrant inclusion in any academic literary canon. Successfully undertaking a literature search and then writing up a suitable literature review entails:

1. Understanding that selecting and then presenting what ‘everyone else’ has to say about our topic, let alone the implications larger debates have for our own project, is one thing. Considering how, and where to put our project into a specific context or vis-à-vis a major figure in the area we are working in is another. Deciding what, or who to leave out of our discussion is another. This ‘sifting and tagging’ process is what researchers are doing when they locate their research with reference to ‘the literature’ or a ‘field’; if not fields, selected thinkers, debates, or schools of thought.
   
2. As one of the first things on a research project’s to-do list, this task is in essence the first piece of original, i.e. independent research we will probably undertake. It has us consciously (re)reading books and articles written by others, targeting literature lists for titles, browsing through library catalogues (less often), or relying on search engines to beach-comb the web for us (see
   Chapter 5
   ). This is before we have possibly finalized the other research elements, and it continues into the writing-up phase. Sometimes these decisions, and oversights, can haunt us long after submitting the final piece of work; something we have to learn to live with, if unable to defend our decisions adequately.
   
3. This task, ‘situating’ or positioning your project in context, is the moment when many students notice that they are undergoing a particular process of socialization around expectations of knowledge and awareness. By
   socialization
   I am referring to the conglomeration of specific skill-sets (referencing), customary behaviours (when to reference), linguistic conventions (how to make the reference), intellectual attitudes (critique and counter-critique), and norms and expectations (who (not) to reference) that come to characterize local research communities, signal more trenchant inter/intradisciplinary identities, and define institutional access and ongoing affiliations.
   ¹⁷
   
4. Something to note though not to get too bogged down about: Peer recognition, social status, and rewards that follow from the above are anchored in such
   kinship patterns
   – networks of respect, intellectual ‘food chains’, citation and even funding flows are embedded in the literature. These are the poles around – and against – which researchers understand their work not only in terms of hierarchical and peer-to-peer relationships but also in line with academic conventions. The cues we get and give as we locate our work (and sometimes ourselves) negatively or positively vis-à-vis others are to a larger extent rendered in written form: our review of the literature and accompanying literature list.
   ¹⁸
   
5. The larger navigating process of establishing your literature, reviewing and presenting it as part of your conceptual framework, also entails a specific skill-set: learning about the different conventions for citing and referencing literature
   and then making them as much ‘second nature’ as possible. Dry as dust as these techniques may be, and as far removed as they appear to be from more scintillating theoretical debates, they are indispensable nonetheless. Even with software-aided ways to reference the literature, learning these ropes serves you in good stead.
   
6. Learning how to read, and digest a literature list – drawing inferences and making judgments about the piece of work you have read or are about to read – is a powerful way to understand how a particular piece of work interacts with those around it. At the writing stage, software tools aside, as most researchers do not have recourse to professional copy-editors to correct their bibliographical referencing for consistency and accuracy, for those readers who are keen to do well in their examination, sloppy referencing is not an option (see
   Chapter 8
   ).
   
7. On the psycho-emotional level, research students often experience the ‘literature review’ requirement as a necessary evil. When not experienced as a form of oppression from those with the authority to judge our work before it has matured, recommendations to read such-and-such article or book can appear condescending. Others take this on enthusiastically, referring to as many books, and as many of the ‘top ten thinkers’ as they can.
   
8. This leads me to one important paradox in terms of everyday practicalities about the role of this element, often overlooked. Many students, as well as relatively experienced researchers, regard literature reviews as somehow disconnected from the research proper; something to get over and done with; hopefully our supervisors will give us the right cues about which literature. In any case, when not being put off – and this happens – many try to get this aspect out of the way or as cursorily as possible in order to get on with the ‘real’ research. On the other hand, and this is quite legitimate for projects based on
   philosophical research
   , the literature review can be regarded as the research proper. If so, then the depth of knowledge and ability to create a coherent narrative and argument raises the bar even higher.
   

In short, literature reviews, broadly and narrowly defined or executed, are not only a core research skill, sensibility, and form of writing; they are also research. All proposals, plans, and written-up results improve as our knowledge of the literature deepens.

These literatures now come to us in printed – hard copy – form and increasingly in digital, web-embedded ways. The implications of the internet as a resource, a research tool, and a new methodological domain in its own right, is the subject of the next chapter.

1
   I have had research students with a background in journalism noting this shift in attention to sources, and the citation trail entailed, as something that marks academic from journalistic forms of investigation. The former draws out the acquiring of new knowledge and insights well past the enjoyment, or use-by date.

2
   Marieke Riethof, email correspondence (18 August 2011).

3
   Thanks to Susan Banducci for her input into this chapter; her expertise on systematic literature reviews and institutional histories in particular.

4
   With the exception of the London School of Economics and Political Science, departments related to the discipline of politics do not have ‘political science’ in their title. Thanks to Susan Banducci for her input into this discussion.

5
   In continental Europe, master and Ph.D. level dissertations (theses) are seen as books, many being published in book form at the time of the public defence; this is not the case in the UK and Commonwealth countries.

6
   A detailed account of how to conduct a meta-analysis can be found in Lipsey and Wilson (1996). There are also several digitized and web-based tools freely available for creating a literature database as you search. These then form the basis of an eventual literature list (see
Chapter 8
for more on citation conventions). The most popular at time of writing are Bookmark, and Zotero; InVivo is also a tool that can be put to good use in this respect (see
Chapter 5
). Their creation of hyperlinked references that take you from your document to the web is indispensable for many. For others, like me, using ‘old school’ manual methods, this functionality is useful in moderation. Either way they do not in themselves create deeper knowledge of what these references actually have to say; they flag rather than reveal substantive content.

7
   Here are some best practices, not exhaustive by far: Jürgen Habermas’ collection of essays,
The Postnational Constellation
(1998); Foucault’s major works (as they are based on a particular notion of reviewing literature),
The Order of Things
(1973 [1966]) in particular. Another, earlier exemplary one is in the first chapters of Simone de Beauvoir’s
The Second Sex
(1949).

8
   See
Discipline and Punish
by Michel Foucault (1995 [1975]).

9
   Overheard in an academic conference, an off-the-cuff remark from a guest speaker (who shall remain anonymous): ‘Personally I don’t like literature reviews; they are seldom done very well!’ Many would agree.

10
   There is a wonderful scene in Gus van Sant’s 1997 film,
Good Will Hunting
(where the hero, returning student/college janitor and unknown mathematical whiz-kid – Matt Damon) is confronted in a bar by a leading member of the student elite claiming superiority based on citing the right literature. What happens next is an astute commentary on how quantity is not always quality, as well as how citation is not in itself an indicator of understanding. Umberto Eco’s book,
The Name of the Rose
, presents a more historical take on the subtle interplay between knowledge, early modern Europe, and the book as a cultural, and subversive artefact. Contrast this to other forms of learning and knowledge acquisition based on oral rather than written transmission, community-based rather than authorial notions of accumulated knowledge (Smith 1999, Giri 2004; see also Foucault 1984 [1977]).

11
   There are some readers who refuse to read further if more than two pages of text are devoid of the writer’s input. Thanks to Susan Banducci for relaying this golden tip.

12
   Indiana University (2004);
www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/plagiarism.shtml
(21 July 2011).

13
   Not only are there cultural differentiations at stake here but also disciplinary issues. The arts and humanities, and social sciences are by and large ‘intertextual’ communities where mutual forms of cited recognition are part of the kinship structures, underscoring epistemic community-formation, pedigree, and success. However, there are areas of academe that see students completing research projects and submitting dissertations without any training on how to cite, whether to cite, and who to cite. In some cases I have seen, and heard of students assuming that they have to use others’ words because these are the experts. These scenarios reveal a gap in the teaching curriculum, I would argue. As such they are very different from recent high-profile controversies (in the UK, the Netherlands and in Germany) where public figures have been accused – and found culpable – of plagiarism or employing a ghost-writer. The latter is the same thing in academic terms because of the requirement that all research work is submitted as an ‘original’ piece of work, i.e. written by the named author.

14
   Even in ‘online tribes’ (see O’Neill 2009) where software platforms are developed, or open web accessed sites like Wikipedia, other forms of ‘crowd sourcing’ or explicit forms of anonymous activities (e.g. Wikileaks, and the 2011 debates around other activist/ whistle-blowing actors on the web like ‘Anonymous’) there are codes of behaviour and ‘good practice’ within communities where sharing is the modus operandi. These codes and how they pan out in everyday practice are constantly evolving; under scrutiny even given that the creative industries, publishing, arts and entertainment fall under intellectual property rights legislation at the national and global level

15
   Duke University (2009):
http://library.duke.edu/research/citing/plagiarism.html
(21 July 2011, emphasis added).

16
   Goldsmiths (2011):
www.gold.ac.uk/gleu/resources/plagiarism/
(21 July 2011).

17
    See Bourdieu (1977, 1984) and Foucault (1973 [1966], 1995 [1975]) for detailed studies of the intersection of socialization processes and social institutions, e.g. schools and universities. David Lodge’s novels take a satirical angle on these matters (1993).

18
   Thanks to Margaret Tibbles, university librarian
extraordinaire
, for reminding me of how often people conflate these terms.