PART I. THINKING METHODOLOGICALLY
Combining Methodologies in Cultural Studies
How have recent historical and intellectual developments complicated lived experience, discourse and the social context, as areas of research ?
D. MORSLEY 70’s : research on audience responses to the Nationwide current affairs programme - he combined the 3 areas of research to come up with new insights on the ‘active’ nature of media audiences and the mediated, social, political dynamics of a historical turning point.
With today’s conjuncture, is it still feasible ?
—> Despite the interest we have in some cultures different from our own (non-westerned), do we do justice to them ?
—> can we objectively criticize our own culture, despite being an integral part of it ?
—> is it pertinent to investigate global economic inequality and exploitation through the lense of culture ?
The political and philosophical roots of culture studies indicate that the methodological project has been riddles with tensions from the start. However, in the early days, these contradictions could still be smoothed by the positivist notion of scientific objectivity.
> 21th: the three classic area of research in cultural studies have been magnified and blurred by development (postmodernity, late modernity, post-industrialism, post colonialism)
- 60’s: civil right movements accusing institutions of institutionalized discrimination + in research lack of representation (ethnic minorities)
- internet: it made our every day life more ‘virtual’ BAUDRILLARD (1983). New technologies have eroded our faith in the ability of media or science to ‘objectively’ describe reality for us.
- late 20th: social, political, economic processes undermined faith in postwar political arrangements and ideologies (ex: 1989 collapse of state-run socialism)
> new collaborative or dialogic modes of research aiming to be truer to the lived worlds of others BUT that new quest, to be truthful, runs into a contradiction with the poststructuralist aim to critically analyze discourses that form the very stuff out of which our experiences are made.
—> there are multiples realities raising the question, whether research is a matter of opinion.
Why is the classical notion that ‘valid’ research is objective problematic ?
Are there alternative notions of validity ? What is the criteria that validate the research ?
The positivist criterion of truthfulness or validity is understood to be universal = the same rules of truthfulness apply, whether the research wants to capture the ‘objective reality’ or people’s subjective. The general goal of truthfulness is, in positivist methodology, translated into a series of detailed procedures.
- reliability: same results from another researcher
- neutrality: the need to make sure research is not being based by personal or political commitments
> alternative notions of validity because: the theories and methods that underpin the research open up different, partial and political views on reality + acknowledging that there is more than one way of making sense of social phenomena asks one to come up with a more multidimensional, nuanced and tentative way of understanding one’s object of study.
—> approach reality in less simplistically dichotomous (true/fake - right/wrong)
There is still rules to conduct a research but accepting the fact that there are different rules that make us relate to reality differently:
- hermeneutic methodology approach: dialogic validity - it evaluates research in terms of how well it manages to capture the lived realities of others LINCOLN (1995)
3 criteria:
. truthfulness: research should do justice to the perspectives of the people being studied. —> collaborative forms of research « member check » SEALE (1999)
. self-reflexivity: become aware of the cultural baggage, such as ‘primitive’ that mediates the understanding of different worlds.
. polyvocality: include the views/voices to be true to the diversity (relations/tensions)
—> // capturing the ‘native’s point of view’ + view research in terms of describing other worlds form the inside in order to respect other people’s lived worlds and realities.
- poststructualist methodological approach: deconstructive validity - it evaluates research in terms of how it can debunk discourses that have come to pass for a ‘ truth’.
3 criteria:
. postmodern excess: there is a potentially infinite number of truths or ways of approaching the reality. —> highlight the multiple ways in which a particular phenomenon can be understood in order to destabilize any ‘fixzed’ understanding of it.
. genealogical history: // FOUCAULT (1984) to challenge the truth by exposing their historicity so taken-for-granted truth are not universel or timeless but the product of specific historical and political agendas.
- deconstructive critique: // DERIDA (1976)
- realist/contextualist methodogical approach: it evaluates research in terms of how well it understands the social, economical, and political context and connections of the phenomenon - to resort to some notion of social and historical context and structures of inequality
2 criteria:
. sensitivity to social context: analyze historical events, statistics and developments using and comparing different resources and views.
. awareness of historicity: to understand its own historicity - social science and its object can not be separated.
—> cultural studies makes reference thaw this/that cultural practice consolidates class, race, gender inequalities. We need to be careful about that statement:
What are the shortcomings of the notion of ‘triangulation’, according to which one combines different metho in order to get closer to a truth ? How does a notion of combining metho help to get beyond positivist notion of one truth and relativist notion of multiple truths ?
DENZIN (1989): triangulation : to combine different kinds of material or methods to see whether they corroborate one another. —> to get more accurate or truthful picture of the social world.
Not useful with the above rules.
RICHARDSON (2000) : instead of triangulation, crystallization: research as prism - reality changes when we change the methodological perspective from which we look at it.
—> create alternative realities that contradict accepted scientific truths - give voice to silenced subordinated knowledges or realities.
—> science has historically been, continues to be a close realm of white privileged.
—> it suits dialogic and deconstructive methods because both draw attention to the way in which language and research ‘create’ different realities, providing tools for analyzing mainstreams truths.
PART II. STUDYING LIVED EXPERIENCES
1. Studying Lived Resistance
A classical approach to studying lived experience = the notion of ‘resistance’
How do the critical and textualist approaches define ‘resistance’ ? How are the two approaches to the study of resistance different ? How are they similar ? What are the strengths and shortcomings of each ?
—> people have some creative and critical abilities to ‘resist’ domination
—> 3 different approaches:
- critical contextualist: effects on ‘real’ structures of dominance (ex: patriarchal)
—> pessimistic opinion about the powers of resistance to transform social structures
- optimistic textualist: focus on symbolic resistance - real ability to challenge structures of power
- contingent approach: analyze resistance activity from several perspectives
How does a ‘contingent’ notion of resistance help to bring together the strengths of the two other approaches ? Why is it more feasible to speak of, and study resistances, in the plural ?
