Research Methods Lecture Notes ARC911 KWatt
ARC9111 Research Methods
Dr. Kathleen Watt
2009/2010
(add comments/discussion from notes)
1. Introduction to Research Methods
2. Positivism and the Scientific Method
3. Why Theorize Research?
4. Phenomenological Inquiry
5. Marxist Criticism
6. Structuralism and Semiotics
7. Post-Structural Cultural Theory
8. Post-Structural Social Theory
9. Post-modern Research Strategies
Session 1
Everyday Research
Intuitive
Common sense
Casual
Spur of the moment
Selective
Focused on personal decisions
Scholarly Research:
Theory based
Structured
Systematic
Planned
Logical
Focused on knowledge about reality
Session 1
Reasons Why Research is Conducted
Descriptive Research – Aims to achieve a description of something, perhaps to provide background information for a further stage of an enquiry or as an end in itself.
Its purpose is to describe rather than to understand, explain or predict.
Purely descriptive research is rare as it is difficult for researchers to avoid the temptation to draw conclusions or proffer recommendations.
Exploratory Research – Aims to provide information on which to base future studies, to define concepts or to formulate hypotheses.
Exploratory research will hopefully raise yet more questions, and its success will depend upon the open-mindedness of the researcher and the degree of control exerted over the subject matter.
Explanatory Research – Aims to gain knowledge in order to advance our understanding of the world.
This may help the researcher support or refute currently held theories.
Explanatory research is concerned primarily with discovering causes, and is seen by some as the most respected form of research and scientific pursuit.
Applied Research – Aims to solve problems and/or establish policy.
Another related term is policy research.
One specific type of applied research is evaluation research which focuses on the effectiveness of programs or actions and assesses potential or real improvements to proposed or existing schemes.
Other types are action research, impact studies and cost-benefit analysis.
Session 1
1) What is the nature of reality?
2) What is the relationship of the researcher to that researched?
3) What is the role of values?
4) What is the language of research?
5) What is the process of research?
Session 1
Key Characteristics of Quantitative Methodology
Numerical – Aims to discover the incidence of particular characteristics of something, and the frequencies in which they occur.
The intention is to infer a relationship between these characteristics.
Planned – Isolates and identifies characteristics (variables) prior to data collection. The instruments to be used are pre-determined and rigid.
Structured – Because of the rigidity of the methods used, the relationship between researcher and subject is made rather formal by the use of standardised procedures to ensure objectivity and consistently.
Objective – Analysis of the data collected relies on statistical methods for determining the probability of occurrence of the predicted relationships between variables.
There is limited scope for the kind of interpretation which allows free reign to subjectivity.
Session 1
Key Characteristics of Qualitative Methodology
Openness and Flexibility - There is no pre-determined hypothesis so there is potential for an approach that is not constrained by scope or orientation.
The flexibility this permits allows for changes to occur during execution of the research; research methods may be readily changed when deemed appropriate.
Communication – The communication between researcher and subject is the vehicle for the research.
The relationship itself is important as it is the subject who defines the scope and flow of the research to an equal extent.
The reality is constructed and interpreted within the framework of this social interaction.
Contextualisation – Communication exists within a social context that is liable to continual change.
The meanings salient to communication reflect and must be understood within this context.
A flexible approach to choice of research instruments is necessary.
Session 1
Research as Systematic Enquiry
1) Agree question or questions to be investigated
2) Undergo research methods training
3) Undertake a comprehensive literature review
4) Identify the methods to be employed
5) Design the means of investigation
6) Collect data
7) Analyse or interpret findings
8) Answer the questions originally posed and make generalisable statements
9) Capture the whole process and findings in a written document
Session 2
Positivism
Auguste Comte
utilitarianism
liberalism
deduction
hypotheses
induction
methodological individualism
epiphenomenal
environment-behaviour research
cognitive maps
environmental perception
spatial cognition
legibility
monograph
mimesis
Session2
Key Ideas of the Enlightenment
Individualism - The individual is the starting point for all knowledge and action, and individual reason cannot be subjected to a higher authority (such as God or the Church).
Rationalism - Reason, or the process of rational thought, independent of experience, is innate within the human mind and is the only basis for organizing knowledge.
Empiricism - The only valid way to gain knowledge about the world is through observation or sensory experience.
Scientific Method - Science allows us to order observable facts and to discover the laws that govern them.
Progress - Knowledge gained by scientific methods can be used to explain or predict events, resulting in the improvement of the human condition.
Universalism - Scientific methods for acquiring objective knowledge are universal so they can be applied to all spheres of endeavour.
Session 2
Types of Theory Work
1) Ad hoc classificatory systems are arbitrary classes constructed for the sake of summarizing data.
They are methods of organizing observations so that more sophisticated theory development can follow.
2) Categorical systems or taxonomies construct classes to fit the subject matter and facilitate the description of relationships among classes of phenomena.
Taxonomies do not offer an explanation; they merely provide descriptive schemes that anticipate explanatory and predictive theories.
3) Conceptual frameworks place descriptive categories within a broad structure of propositions, which are used to analyze the data.
Conceptual frameworks are based on concepts, the first building blocks of theory.
They systematically direct empirical and theoretical activity around a core set of problems.
4) Theoretical systems combine taxonomies and conceptual schemes with descriptions and predictions in a deductive relationship, but they lack an empirical base.
5) Empirical theoretical systems are fully developed positivist theories consisting of concepts, definitions, hypotheses or propositions and empirical observations.
Session 2
The Main Characteristics of Positivism
1) Positivism is based on phenomenalism, which assumes that every phenomenon in the world has an independent existence, or "essence", which remains constant and can be observed.
2) Positivism assumes that every phenomenon is governed by laws that a detached investigator using appropriate methods may discover.
3) The knowledge discovered using these methods is believed to be objective and factual.
4) Positivism claims that once knowledge is gained it can be used to explain events, make predictions about future events, and control phenomena in ways that will be advantageous to the controllers.
5) Positivist research is organized around the principles of verifiability orfalsifiability.
6) Positivism makes a very rigid distinction between fact and value and portrays itself as neutral, objective or value-free.
7) The positivist or scientific method aims to build theories by incorporating different levels of theory-work.
8) Positivists believe in the essential unity of the scientific method, that the methods for acquiring knowledge are the same in all spheres of experience.
Session 3
Concept: an idea or image of reality
Model: an intellectual construct or device created to simplify or reduce complexity and to show the operation of underlying mechanisms
Theory: a set of analytical or interpretative propositions representing relationships between various ideas or concepts
Session 3
Explanatory theories
Interpretative theories
Normative theories
Session 3
Cultural theory
Addresses problems surrounding:
· the nature of artistic production
· the meanings generated by cultural artefacts
· how those meanings are received by different audiences
Social theory
Addresses problems surrounding:
· different orders of social reality from interpersonal encounters to broader institutional arrangements
· relationships between the individual and society
· relationships between human actions and social structures
Session 4
Phenomenology
Edmund Husserl
phenomenological method
phenomenological reduction
intentionality
eidetic reduction
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
existential
"lived-world"
"being-in-the world"
body subject
Martin Heidegger
dasein
bauen
genius loci
Christian Norberg-Schulz
hermeneutics
hermeneutic circle
Hans-Georg Gadamer
Session 4
The Hermeneutic Circle
The whole is reflected in the parts,
just as together the parts disclose the whole.
Session 4
Summary of Phenomenology
1) Phenomenology is defined as the study or description of phenomena from the viewpoint of the experiencing person.
2) It is part of a broad philosophical tradition that rejects the fundamental claims of positivism.
3) Phenomenologists believe their task is to interpret meaning rather than search for objective, causal knowledge.
4) Appropriate objects of inquiry are any phenomena that appear to human consciousness, that is, anything that may be experienced.
5) No assumptions are made about these phenomena, they may be non-physical phenomena as well as physical objects.
6) Every act of consciousness is said to be intentional in that it is conscious of something outside itself; so a unity is conceived between the conscious mind and that of which it is conscious.
Session 5
Marxism
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
historical materialism
base/superstructure
teleology (teleological)
mode of production
dialectic
alienation
ideology
"false consciousness"
Louis Althusser
overdetermination
decentring
interpellated
ideological state apparatus
Antonio Gramsci
hegemony
historic bloc
Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse
instrumental reason
repressive tolerance
David Harvey
gentrification
distantiation
Manuel Castells
spatiality
collective consumption
ruptual unity
Manfredo Tafuri
Session 5
Summary of Marxism
1. Marxism is a body of philosophical, economic and social beliefs about human nature and society, as well as a political movement based upon those beliefs.
2. Marxism is best understood not as a single set of ideas, but as a debate conducted for more than a century around the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
3. Marxism is a determinist theory of society that stresses the centrality of human productive activity in the organization of all aspects of social life.
4. Its central concern is the relationship between human consciousness and the "material life" created by the necessary activity of production.
5. In emphasizing the economic foundation of society, Marxism is opposed to other theories which claim that ideas are the fundamental basis of social reality.
6. Marxists study "objective" social relations and class interests rather than the thoughts, feelings and motivations of specific individuals.
7. The aim of a Marxist analysis is to expose the social relations underlying the inequality that characterizes the capitalist system.
Session 6
Structuralism and Semiotics
Ferdinand de Saussure
binary oppositions
langue/parole
synchronic/diachronic
syntagmatic/associative
signified/signifier
Claude Levi-Strauss
signifying practices
Amos Rapoport
cognitive schemata
encode
semiology
Charles Sanders Pierce
semiological system
Umberto Eco
denotative
connotative
ideology
Roland Barthes
chain of signification
Session 6
langue/parole
Synchronic/Diachronic
Syntagmatic/Associative
Signified/Signifier
Session 6
killed
The boy kicked the girl.
kissed
Session 6
Summary of Structuralism and Semiotics
1. Structuralism is not a philosophy, but a method of analysis focusing on relationships between elements in a system rather than on independently existing objects.
2. In studying social and cultural phenomena, analysts search for the structures and defining rules that determine human behaviour.
3. Structure is conceived as an arrangement of elements which is internally complete or coherent, conforming to a set of internal laws, self-regulating and capable of transformation.
4. Structuralists believe a phenomenon has meaning only through its integration into the structure of which it is a part.
5. Their ultimate aim is to discover universal structures that
govern the operation of the human mind.
Session 7
Post-structural Cultural Theory
discourse
inter-textuality
discursive practices
textual communities
episteme
discursive formation
discursive fields
contestation
transformation
“archaeology”
“genealogy”
normalisation
inter-discursivity
disciplinary power
heterotopia
deconstruction
destabilise
the metaphysics of presence
logocentrism
phonocentrism
absence
chain of signification
différance
trace
play of signification
fragmentation
Session 7
What is Post-Structuralism and How Does It Differ from Structuralism?
1) Post-structuralism is both an extension and a critique of the fundamental concepts of structuralism rather than a theory in its own right.
2) Post-structuralism moves beyond the study of linguistics (or language as a system) and is concerned with philosophical issues such as the nature of "truth" and conceptions of the individual.
3) While structuralists conceive of the "subject" as the socially determined centre of consciousness, post-structuralists "de-centre" the subject by claiming that "the self" is constitutedthrough signifying practices situated within social discourse.
4) While structuralists maintain that a sign is a stable, unified entity whose meaning is ultimately discoverable, post-structuralists argue that language is always fluid and meaning can never be recovered completely.
5) For post-structuralists, there is no absolute authority for knowledge or "truth"; there is only interpretation which produces meaning by the interaction of a reader with a text.
6) Since language is the ultimate source of meaning, then all claims to "truth" are treated as products of discursive struggles for power.
7) Post-structuralists search for contradictions and multiple meanings in a text or aim to expose the power relations within language, discourse and representation.
Session 7
Deconstruction
1) Notice what a text takes to be natural, self-evident, original, or worthy of pursuit or emulation.
2) Notice those places where a text is most insistent that there is a firm and fast distinction between two things.
3) Show how something represented as primary, complete and original is actually derived and/or the effect of something else.
4) Show how something represented as completely different from something else only exists by defining itself against that something else; show how it depends on that thing.
Session 7
Discourse Analysis
1) The focus of discourse analysis should be local points of power rather than centralized forms to show how power functions daily through normalized techniques and procedures.
2) Analysis should focus on the material or practicaleffects of power rather than a search for its origins.
3) Power should be analyzed as operating independently of particular persons; individuals are only the conduitsthrough which power moves.
4) Studies should portray power as ascending from the lowest levels of society (the family, schools, etc.) rather than descending from above.
5) Power should not be treated as ideology, but instead as the rules and instruments that produce what is accepted as "truth".
Session 8
Post-structural Social Theory
Pierre Bourdieu
habitus
cultural capital
symbolic interactionism
George Herbert Mead
Anthony Giddens
structuration theory
duality
practical consciousness
discursive consciousness
reflexivity
temporality
instantiated
time-geography
life-path
web of interaction
presence-availability
social constructionism
Berger and Luckmann
Thomas Kuhn
regime of belief
Bruno Latour
actor network
field of operation
interpretive flexibility
stabilization
closure of debate
Session 8
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM
The fundamental tenets of Symbolic Interactionism are as follows:
1. Human beings act towards things on the basis of the meanings that the things have for them.
2. These meanings are the product of social interaction in human society.
3. These meanings are modified and handled through an interpretive process that is used by each individual in dealing with the signs each encounters.
Session 8
Social systems - reproduced relations of interdependence between individuals or groups involving the situated social practices of human subjects.
Social systems have structural properties which are characterised by the absence of subjects.
Social structures - the generative rules and power relations that control material, symbolic or authoritative resources which are built into specific social systems.
Structures are not “observable” except when they are instantiated as moments of a social system.
Structuration - the conditions governing the continuity or transformation of structures, and therefore the reproduction of systems.
From Giddens, Anthony (1979) Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd.
Session 8 STRUCTURATION THEORY
1. Social reproduction is an ongoing process that is inseparable from the everyday performance of institutional activities.
Performance of these activities results in the perpetuation or modification of the institutions, of the knowledge necessary to repeat activities, and of the existing structural relationships.
2. Socialisation also occurs through participating in institutional activities.
In socialisation rules of behaviour are absorbed and become taken for granted and appropriate skills are acquired and reinforced.
3. Socialisation and social reproduction occur simultaneously.
Through socialisation and social reproduction individual consciousness is shaped while society is likewise shaped by the individual and his or her consciousness.
4. To reveal the dialectical relationships between individual and society, the constant becoming of both, one must deal withmaterially-situated, social practices over time.
5. As Structuration unfolds, the structural properties of a social system express themselves through the operation of everyday practices at the same time as everyday practices generate and reproduce structural properties of the social system.
Session 8
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM
1. Based on the assumption that all forms of “reality” are socially constructed
2. Aims to reveal the duality of cultural production
3. Cultural artefacts are the materialisation of social practices
4. Actor networks constitute a field of operation for the authorship of cultural artefacts
5. Aims to identify the precise conditions which lead to the closure of debate and stabilisation of form
6. Artefactual form is a negotiated relationship between problems and solutions
Session 8
Summary of Post-structural Social Theory
1. Post-structural social theorists are critical of cultural theory for functioning at a high level of abstraction divorced from the activities of everyday life
2. Their goal is to break down or establish links between the artificial conceptual divisions of agency and structure, individual and society or subject and object.
3. They aim to produce a form of analysis that they believe is closer to the reality of society and social life.
4. Post-structural social theory is concerned to explain the specific relationship between the cognitive processes of the individual and the wider social systems and structures in which they are implicated.
Session 9
Postmodern Research Strategies
postmodernity/modernity
epochal shift
Jean-Francois Lyotard
meta-narratives
totalising
Jean Baudrillard
"hyperreality"
simulacrum (simulacra)
Fredric Jameson
"cognitive mapping"
post-Marxism
Michel de Certeau
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe
radical democracy
contingency
relational hegemony
Henri Lefebvre
identity politics
feminism
post-colonialism
hybridity
globalization
hetero-architecture
spatiality
postmetropolis
universalism/particularism
localization
bricolage
Session 9
Characteristics of Postmodernity
1. Rise of a global consumer economy and mass marketing
2. Development of new post-industrial technologies
3. Development of new systems of fast transport and communications
4. Demise of political totalities and a new emphasis on pluralism
5. Dissolution of the Enlightenment project and fragmentation of the notion of “selfhood”
6. Prominent global hyper-militarism and resulting awareness of potential extinction
Session 9
Characteristics of Postmodernism
1. Deletion of the boundary between art and everyday life
2. Collapse of hierarchical distinctions between “high” and “popular” culture
3. Stylistic eclecticism and the mixing of codes
4. Celebration of parody, pastiche, irony and playfulness
5. Espousal of surface over depth
6. Shift in emphasis from content to form
7. Decline of the concepts of originality and artistic genius, and assumption that art is only repetitious
Session 9
Characteristics of Postmodernity according to Fredric Jameson
commodification of aesthetics
depthlessness
historicity
emotional intensities
technology
Session 9
hegemonic : order-maintaining
counter-hegemonic: resistant or order-transforming
Session 9
Post-Marxism
1) Post-Marxists acknowledge that there is no necessary correspondence between economics and culture, and that the cultural realm has a presence and power of its own separate from the economic base.
2) They recognize that there has been a transition from a society of commodity production to a society of consumption and the re-production of images and information.
3) Post-Marxists follow Foucault in observing that power is not a force located within a single group, class or action, but it permeates all our lives "from the bottom up".
4) They hold a fragmented view of class, arguing that gender, ethnic, religious or sexual identities cut across and fracture the Marxist notion of social class.
5) They recognize that the expression or representation of these "sub-cultural" identities constitutes new sites of oppression and struggle that serve to replace traditional class politics.
Session 9
Summary of Postmodernism
1. Postmodernism is an imprecise, elusive and sometimes contradictory term with a range of applications and potential understandings.
2. There are at least three distinct ways the term postmodernism has been used: as an epoch, as a style and as a method.
3. Each of these perspectives conceives of postmodernism in relationalterms and claims that society, culture and forms of analysis have changed significantly in recent decades.
4. Postmodern theorists are concerned with describing the nature of these changes and suggesting reasons for why they have come about.
5. They propose new approaches and new vocabularies for understanding and discussing contemporary social and cultural phenomena.
6. Many postmodern critics agree that as a style or a form of analysis, postmodernism aims to be a critique, transgression or subversion of pre-existing norms.
7. Postmodernism is conceived by many as a "crisis of representation", or loss of faith in our ability to represent reality.
