Mauthner, N.S and Doucet, A. (2008) ‘Knowledge Once Divided Can Be Hard to Put Together Again’: An Epistemological Critique of Collaborative and Team-Based Research Practices (2008) (original) (raw)
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Knowledge Once Divided Can Be Hard to Put Together Again
Sociology, 2008
This article critically examines team and collaborative research as an `academic mode of production'. Our main argument is that while theoretically qualitative social science research is rooted within a postfoundational epistemological paradigm, normative team-based research practices embody foundational principles. Team research relies on a division of labour that creates divisions and hierarchies of knowledge, particularly between researchers who gather embodied and contextual knowledge `in the field' and those who produce textual knowledge `in the office'. We argue that a theoretical commitment to a postfoundational epistemology demands that we translate this into concrete research practices that rely on concerted team-based relations rather than divisions of labour, and a reflexive research practice that strives to involve all team members in all aspects of knowledge construction processes.
Methodologically Becoming: Power, knowledge and team research
Gender Place and Culture, 2003
This article explores the path of methodological and epistemological negotiation travelled by a team of four geographers conducting research among people with transnational connections between northern New Jersey and El Salvador. Having illustrated that all data are contextual, feminist scholars have explored the power relations in which data collection is embedded in order to situate knowledge. The relationship between the dynamics of research teams and the broader political struggles with which they engage, however, remains a blind spot within feminist field methods and writing strategies deployed to 'see accountably'. The authors argue that there is an undertheorised relationship between the politics of academic research projects and the broader political movements with which they engage that may serve as a fertile intersection for feminist research. They explore relationships between team, field, and institutions in the context of negotiating difference among team members and their aspirations for the project. The article contributes to discussions of power, knowledge construction, and the politics of conducting fieldwork as a team by relaying experiences both from the perspective of individuals on the team and the team as a whole. The authors depict their objectives, successes, failures, and research politics; all part of a process of methodological becoming.
Critical methodologies in International Political Sociology (IPS) and its intersecting fields and research traditions have increasingly coalesced around the idea that research should be done in dialogue, and possibly cooperation, with people rather than only about them. Drawing together research under this theme and wider debates on participatory, activist, and action research, alongside our own research experience, this article proposes the notion of cooperative research to capture and further develop this research agenda. In the context of neoliberal academia and its narrow insurance-based conception of research ethics and safety, we argue that cooperative and ethical research can be done and developed further both in the cracks and margins of the system, and in a gradual reform process within it. Starting with a survey of existing traditions and recent advances towards cooperative research, we proceed to unpack what cooperative research looks like in practice and how it benefits the involved parties. The article then explores structural and epistemic obstacles that cooperative research faces within the current institutional, body, and geo-politics of knowledge production. It also reflects on future avenues to productively deal with the inherent contradictions of cooperative research, not only by embracing the "ethos of critique", but also by trying to make (even small) changes within the Western knowledge production system by promoting, and rendering more legitimate, alternative forms of knowledge and storytelling.
Developing knowledge through participation and collaboration: Research as mutual learning processes
2019
This article examines a general question about how we in research develop the knowledge we write about and present as ‘results of research’. It scrutinizes research processes as a social practice, where several parties participate, collaborate and learn from a process where researchers involve themselves in exploring specific problems across societal contexts. In this way, the presented discussions can be seen as a critique of tendencies to approach research as an isolated endeavour, where results are produced by applying special methods and techniques that prevent influence from the social world and, in this way, creating knowledge about the world by ‘leaving it’. The article argues for approaching the development of knowledge as a social practice in itself. Research processes transcend different contexts, involve different perspectives, and the researchers seek to analyse connections in a common world by exploring how an explicit problem is connected to social conditions and inter...
This paper attempts to theorise difference as encountered by a team of six diverse researchers interested in addressing cultural and religious diversity in sexuality education. Drawing on Todd’s (2003, 2011, 2011a) concepts of ‘the crossroads’, ‘becoming present’ and ‘relationality’ we explore how ‘difference’ in team research might be re-conceptualised. Our aim is to theorise difference, differently from other methodological literature around collaborative research. Typically, this work highlights markers of difference based on researcher identity (such as gender and ethnicity) as the source of difference in research teams, and examines how these differences are worked through. The aim of this paper is not to resolve difference, but understand it as occurring in the relational process of researchers becoming present to each other. Difference that is not understood as the product of the individual, may engender an orientation to ethical relationality, whereby research teams might hold in tension a conversation between the individual and the collective.
" Plugging In " Epistemology: A Theoretical and Methodological Manoeuvre in Qualitative Research
In this paper I aim to illustrate how an epistemological three-way manoeuvre I propose may work in qualitative academic research. Epistemology is critical to my research because I live the topic that I research and in this paper I chart a three-way manoeuvre between and through an articulation of my researcher self, theoretical framing and the intent of the research project. This paper is my response to Jackson and Mazzei's (2013) work " Plugging One Text into Another: Thinking with Theory in Qualitative Research. " I have included the paper title here to introduce the reader to Jackson & Mazzei's work earlier in my paper in which they advocate a " plugging in " of ceaseless variations of ideas and theories. I suggest that a " plugging in " of forthright epistemology in academic research is an important text that can " plug into " theory and data for rich explorations in qualitative research. Articulations of epistemological foundations of research allow researchers to be explicit about their worldview and acknowledge that it is integral to their researcher self and therefore impossible to separate from research practice. In this paper I demonstrate a methodological move through epistemology, drawing on the epistemology section in my own research work which details my researcher positioning and is able to examine how my experiences of sole parenting in higher education has influenced and informed this study. I consider three critical incidents; my initial assumptions and judgement about sole parents, regulatory exchanges I experienced as un-helpful as I transitioned into postgraduate education and the institutional structures of postgraduate timetabling as regulatory and potentially exclusionary. Articulating one's research positionality infuses research with context and embeds a " thinking with theory " which can open up new meanings in research by foregrounding the epistemological pathway that is fundamental to the research process.