Hearing the grass grow: Emotional and epistemological challenges of practice-near research

This paper discusses the concept of practice-near research in terms of the emotional and epistemological challenges that arise from the researcher coming ‘near’ enough to other people for psychological processes to ensue. These may give rise in the researcher to confusion, anxiety and doubt about who is who and what is what; but also to the possibility of real emotional and relational depth in the research process. Using illustrations from three social work doctoral research projects undertaken by students at the Tavistock Clinic and the University of East London the paper examines four themes that seem to the author to be central to meaningful practice-near research undertaken in a spirit of true emotional and epistemological open-mindedness: the smell of the real; losing our minds; the inevitability of personal change; and the discovery of complex particulars.     

Repositioning the research encounter: exploring power dynamics and positionality in youth research

Childhood and youth studies have seen the development of a range of innovative research methods over the past two decades. However, many studies have focused on the ideals of empowerment and ‘giving voice’ rather than developing understandings of the nuanced and complex experiences of children and youth. This paper argues that the development of an insightful sociology of childhood and youth necessitates an understanding of complex, fluid, and often political, processes of youth experience. It argues that the use of research methods characterized by a variety of power dynamics can generate situated knowledges of youth experience. Ongoing reflexive analysis of researcher and participant positionality in research encounters is posited as affording insightful and in-depth research perspectives. This is illustrated through discussion of qualitative research carried out with Muslim teens in the west of Ireland which involved the use of focus groups, visual narratives and an online blog site.     

DILEMMAS IN RESEARCH: ISSUES OF VULNERABILITY AND DISEMPOWERMENT FOR THE SOCIAL WORKER/RESEARCHER

Qualitative research ethics discussions have established a sound knowledge and practice base which advises on the protection and rights of the research informants. This paper, although supporting the primacy of informant safety, will highlight less visible research debates. The potential for vulnerability and harm of the social work researcher will be explored. The value of achieving heightened empathy and emotional resonance with research participants is considered as a process which the author suggests is likely to increase the richness of the research data, but also may accentuate researcher vulnerability or distress. The author's experience of doing personal research with vulnerable informants, and of being a social work research supervisor, will be used to reflect on processes and practices which she claims may make social work researchers particularly vulnerable to conflict and distress. Data from her recent research which explored the experiences of social work researchers will be used to illustrate these issues.     

‘In the Company of Men’: A Reflexive Tale of Cultural Organizing in a Small Organization

A tale of fieldwork in a small organization is discussed in this article with a view to highlighting how social processes, cultural understandings and expressions of gender are produced during fieldwork interaction. The tale is told reflexively and retrospectively, recording an ongoing conversation about fieldwork experience. Central to the tale is discussion of how the researcher is drawn into ‘culture–making’ within the organization and the ways in which fieldwork interaction creates a ‘space’ through which organizational members engage with, work through and realize work–place values. In this article there are multiple levels of reflection. At one level it is examined how the organizational–researcher role of ‘emotional nurturer’ was constructed during fieldwork. At the same time some cultural insights drawn from ethnographic inquiry and intensive interviewing within the small organization are presented. The analysis is also shaped by a further layer of post–fieldwork reflection and interpretation which draws in emotional issues and expressions of gender. It is argued that a close scrutiny of fieldwork roles is important to organizational research in that it makes explicit how the researcher–‘native’ interaction is central to the theorizing process and how the researcher can become a participant in organizational culture–making.     

Going back: ‘Stalking’, talking and researcher responsibilities in qualitative longitudinal research

This paper explores the process of going back in qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) to gather later accounts of unfolding personal experiences. The design of interview-based QLR is usually premised on collecting data, over-time, around an unfolding experience or event. This design facilitates the establishment of an on-going research relationship and ‘rapport’ and the accessing of fluid and time-sensitive accounts of individual experiences, leading to more nuanced understandings of temporal subjectivities. However in practice maintaining a sample in QL research, which may span a number of years, can be challenging and the process of going back, complicated. This paper reflects on issues and responsibilities which can arise when researchers try to access and go back to participants, especially where experiences once optimistically narrated and future-oriented have unfolded in unplanned and personally unwelcome ways. Using researcher experiences and the data from later phases of two UK based QLR studies on transition to first-time motherhood and first-time fatherhood, the practical steps of maintaining contact, reconnecting with participants and going back are documented. How does the passage of time and changes in participant’s lives alter research relationships, interpretations of data and researcher responsibilities?     

Working with emotion: Issues for the researcher in fieldwork and teamwork

This paper addresses the role of emotion in the qualitative research process and in particular, the effects of emotional experiences on the researcher. Drawing briefly on the literature, we show the importance of emotion for understanding the research process. Whilst this literature acknowledges the emotional risk for research respondents, there is little evidence providing in-depth understanding of the emotions of the researcher. We consider theoretically and empirically, the significance of emotion throughout the duration of a research project. Using our own personal experiences in the field, we present a range of emotional encounters that qualitative researchers may face. We offer suggestions for research teams who wish to develop strategies for 'managing' emotion and effectively utilizing 'emotionally-sensed knowledge'. We conclude that unless emotion in research is acknowledged, not only will researchers be left vulnerable, but also our understandings of the social world will remain impoverished. The challenge therefore is how to construct meaning and develop understanding and knowledge in an academic environment that, on the whole, trains researchers to be rational and objective, and 'extract out' emotion.     

“…It’s Just Very Hard To Fail A Student…”: Decision-Making And Defences Against Anxiety – An Ethnographic And Practice-Near Study Of Practice Assessment Panels

The practice learning site is an important place of determining suitability for social work practice and as such is a key site of gate keeping. Research, both international and multi-disciplinary have consistently highlighted the challenging emotional processes involved in failing a student in a practice learning setting. This research has largely focused on practice educators. What has been not been explored however, are wider decision-making processes about students who have failed the placement, namely, what is known in the UK as the Practice Assessment Panel (PAP). The paper thus documents findings from an ethnographic study of four PAPs in England, utilising a practice-near analytical approach. Findings centre around three key themes; the deferring of difficult decisions, powerful voices and the unacknowledged emotional climate. The paper concludes that the PAP can be theorised as a powerful projective field and suggests possible ways forward in light of the themes to emerge.     

Performing the role of ethnographer: processing and managing the emotional dimensions of prison research

This article presents a reflective account of the emotional dimensions of in-depth field research in prisons. Drawing on the work of Goffman to make sense of ethnographic processes and techniques, it is argued that performance and impression management play crucial roles in the research process. However, it is suggested that there are commensurate emotional costs associated with the roles and identities that ethnographers might enact in the field. It is argued that the finer details of ethnographic practice can be better understood when the emotional dimensions of research experiences are carefully analysed and processed.     

Bringing their worlds back: using photographs to spur conversations on everyday place

This article poses a methodological argument for the use of expressive photographs in fostering more mindful discussions of the experience of everyday places. The article builds on the author’s ‘guided tours’ methodology of walk/make/talk, which involves asking inhabitants to take the researcher on tours of their everyday places, the researcher making creative visual representations of those places and then, bringing those images back to residents to talk about how the photographs are similar, or in contrast, to lived experience. The article uses examples from research in Brooklyn, NY, and Oakland, CA, to specifically explore the ‘making’ and ‘talking’ part of the process, and to argue for the critical distance gained when a participant has the opportunity to see their most commonplace and often unremarked worlds brought back to them through another pair of eyes. The paper considers distinctions with other photo-elicitation methods and discusses how this model of bringing people’s worlds back to them often allowed the jolt of a new perspective to suspend the taken-for-grantedness of the world, creating a time and opportunity to consider the everyday in more depth. It further discusses how the method enabled people to clarify three aspects of everydayness that are hard to pin down: the feel of place, emotional responses, and seeing past time. The paper challenges conceptions of photographs as ‘data’, champions expressive work in research, and proposes that photographs made by a range of authors can enable new ways of seeing, challenging and discussing the everyday urban environment.     

Developing practice-near social work research to explore the emotional worlds of severely learning disabled adolescents in ‘transition’ and their families

This paper aims to make a contribution to the development of practice-near research through discussion of a project which explores the experiences of a socially marginalized group — young people with severe learning disabilities. Psychoanalytically informed infant observation is adapted as a research method for observing these young people in the family home. The paper discusses the rationale for the development and adaption of the research method in the process of observing. The discussion focuses on the key themes of understanding the quality of developing subjectivity and the ways that young people, adults and siblings coped with the often stressful aspects in the home. The article concludes with the implications for policy and practice and proposes that methodologies such as this are needed to capture the complexity of the lives and experiences of these service users and their families.     

Sociological Introspection and Emotional Experience

Although social constructionists now study emotions, they neglect what emotion feels like and how it is experienced. This paper argues that social constructionists can and should study how private and social experience are fused in felt emotions. Resurrecting introspection (conscious awareness of awareness or self-examination) as a systematic sociological technique will allow social constructionists to examine emotion as a product of the individual processing of meaning as well as socially shared cognitions. Examining introspection as a sociological process, this paper argues that introspection can generate interpretive materials from self and others useful for understanding the lived experience of emotions. Findings from four studies–one, self-introspective, and the other three, interactive introspective examinations with co-investigators–provide information about the subjective part of emotion. They demonstrate the advantages of introspection in dealing with the complex, ambiguous, and processual nature of emotional experience.     

Liberating voices through narrative methods: the case for an interpretive research approach

This article argues the case for employing narrative methods when undertaking research with people with profound learning difficulties and people who lack verbal articulacy. It considers the foundations of life history research and the transformative position of the researcher since the 1930s. The article then examines the requisite skills for eliciting life stories and interviewing, followed by the form of the interview. It questions the logic in rigidly following qualitative interviewing as the main tool for eliciting information. The author argues that the skills and experiences of the researcher become important during challenging interview situations and that moving away from traditional qualitative interviewing means attempting to include people with profound learning difficulties in the process of researching their lives and experiences.     

Notes from the field: Emotions of place in the production and interpretation of text

Focusing on the emotions generated by place, this paper describes a journey of emotional reactions to place, emotional reflection around cultural difference, followed by later reflection and reassessment. It is argued that the use of emotions as data can provide a mirror through which the taken for granteds of the researcher can be made visible. An example is given of the way that the concept of distance and the intersectionality of emotion, time and space as a confluence of culture and subject positions, can be used to operationalize emotions as data.     

Documents as ‘risky’ sources of data: a reflection on social and emotional positioning – a research note

As units of analysis, documents are often seen as unproblematic, easily accessed sources of data. This research note discusses and reflects on a research project where documents were not easy to access and instead prompted significant negotiation, contained disturbing information and images and had an emotional impact on the researcher. A reflexive account is provided in this paper, which draws upon feminist methodological theory and explores the researcher’s experiences of using documents in research. The paper concludes that documents should not always be categorised as a low risk data source, rather issues such as access difficulties, ethical dilemmas and potential emotional harm, should also be considered.     

The death of informants or when a fieldworker outlives the community studied

This paper analyses the phenomenon of the death of informants. Based on his own experience with the long-term (1999–2016) research of Voyvodovo – the only Czech village in Bulgaria, the author shows what the death of one’s informants means for the research and the researcher. The author argues that any long-term fieldwork entails emotional involvement of the researcher, and so the departure of his or her informants has a deep impact on the researcher’s well-being. The articles also address methodological consequences of the death of informants, namely, the case when the death of all of them leads to a situation that the group ceases to exist. The author shows that with the last member’s passing away Malinowski’s ‘native’s point of view’ is lost forever. The author also suggests that the topic of death of informants should be included into educational curricula for fieldwork training.     

‘It’s like exercise for your soul’: how participation in youth arts activities contributes to young people’s wellbeing

Active participation in organised youth arts activities is generally considered ‘good’ for young peoples’ social and emotional wellbeing. There is, however, less known about how youth arts participation helps to create wellbeing benefits. This paper details a retrospective narrative study that sought to understand not only what wellbeing benefits 17 participants attributed to youth arts activity, but more specifically, how these outcomes occurred. The concept of liminality, within a spaces of wellbeing approach, is used as a framework to explore and understand participant’s stories of their time at Corrugated Iron Youth Arts, in Darwin, Australia. A pattern of transformation involving three phases emerged through an analysis of participant stories. This involved (1) joining in, (2) developing skills and gaining experience, and (3) becoming a ‘real’ performer. These stages have strong resonance with contemporary conceptualisations of liminal experiences, and provide further evidence for the value of youth arts activity as a space for the development of social and emotional wellbeing.     

FOLK MODELS OF DYADIC MALE BONDS IN ISRAELI CULTURE

This article explores the phenomenology of dyadic male bonds in Israeli culture, based on a secondary analysis of friendship narratives derived from a sample of Israeli-Jewish men. Two folk models of male friendships are delineated, situated in local images of hegemonic masculinity in Zionist ideology. The first model is the hevreman style of relatedness, underscoring sociability and adventure seeking. It endorses "cool" sharing involving nonverbal modes of communication and physical support. The countermodel is "intellectual" relatedness, stressing the exchange of ideas and "soul talk." It endorses psychologistic support and the verbal articulation of emotions. These tropes are discussed in comparative context. Against the dominant psychological-feminist paradigm of "being" versus "doing," it is argued that experiences of male intimacy are richer than overriding stereotypes of male inexpressivity suggest. The article calls for an attentive use of folk models in the sociology of emotions, taking into account the effect of hegemonic meaning systems. Rather than viewing emotional behavior, gender stereotypes, and ideology as separate features in the study of emotions, it underscores how emotional experience is dependent on cultural-interpretative processes nested in local and global social norms, collective history, and gendered ideology.     

Getting emotional: An emotion-cognition dual-factor model of crisis communication

The effect of emotional experience on cognitive processes is an under-explored phenomenon in crisis communication research, despite indications of the increasing importance of emotion-based communication in the digital era. Emerging evidence indicates that the emotional experiences of publics play a critical role during organizational crises and determine the degree to which organizations are able to successfully devise communications that help them deal with such crises. Yet no comprehensive, theoretically sound model exists for analyzing how emotions influence the cognitive processing of crisis information. Our study proposes just such a model, capable of describing how cognition and emotion, separately or interactively, influence the publics’ processing of crisis information and consequently their attitudes and behaviors. Our model describes how emotional variables determine whether the publics take a cognition-oriented approach or an emotion-oriented approach to information processing and subsequent formation of interpretations, evaluations, and judgments directed toward organizations. Moreover, our model explains how an emotion-to-cognition assessment of publics’ attitudes is possible and makes a case for how it is critical for predicting and influencing the publics’ behavior during organizational crises. The hope is that this model will aid practitioners and academics in understanding why the publics’ emotions matter during crisis communication as well as how to craft more effective communication strategies as a result. Finally, several avenues for future research are suggested in order to test the validity of our conceptual model in different contexts.     

Exploring provocation as a research method in the social sciences

Abstract

This paper explores provocation as an approach towards social science research. While routinely used in natural science and arts research, this paper argues provocation might enable the social science researcher to initiate critical reflection amongst participants on issues that are often otherwise overlooked, obscured or accepted as naturalised practice. By assuming the role of provocateur, stimulator and/or agitator, the social science researcher can interrupt the flow of everyday life in order to illuminate and draw attention to complex social issues. Using research interventions that embrace, rather than deny, the socially constructed nature of the research process, provocation provides an alternative to largely non-obtrusive methods favoured in much social science research. This paper concludes by outlining the practical and methodological issues associated with this approach – in particular the complicated ethics of provoking reflection on topics that might not have otherwise come to the participant’s attention.