Teabags, critical bifocality and configuring people

November 16, 2012 by emcgeeney 1 Comment

Teabags, critical bifocality and configuring people

Karen Henwood’s blog for the first seminar on “New Frontiers in Qualitative Longitudinal Research” Friday November 16^th 2012

Yesterday’s seminar was a feast of rich ideas and discussions. For me, having reflected on the day, it also raised some conundrums. How important these are I do not know, but blogging is a way to capture them and contribute further to the debate.

There was a suggestion that practice theories should be at the centre of theoretical and methodological advance in QLR. But, at the same time, QLR (and other social research) was said to remain too trapped by working within a social science paradigm that is not conducive to historical re-study.

I detected a disagreement over about whether focussing understanding on processes and modalities of social reproduction could explain social change. Personally, I wondered if this one of those times when discussion might have returned to what is at stake when we lay claim to studying the dynamics of change.

“Critical bifocality” was momentarily placed centre-stage in discussions of how global phenomena are reproduced at local level: an intriguing thought but one that might need to be fleshed out as part of the aforementioned discussions of social reproduction and the dynamics of change.

There was a lot of excitement when it seemed that unusual metaphors might be opening up possible ways of thinking innovatively about methodological issues in QLR (an aim of those funding the New Frontiers in QLR network). A high point was when teabags were mentioned. This was a reference to the “perforations” that make it possible for meanings to leak out while others remain in place. Maybe a space to watch at future events?

In recent years QLR has been at the forefront of efforts to expand our repertoire of ways of generating knowledge. In particular, it has concentrated attention on what can be gleaned by studying people’s everyday lives in and through time and close up; by seeking to understand the significance of accounts and told stories; and by developing relational understandings that include accounting for linkages between different temporalities and between our pasts, presents and futures (also known as then, now and next).  Yet, strangely, some of our methods and practices do not seem to have enabled us to configure people very well, although asking participants about favoured objects and picturing these had been productive of good data.  I was curious at this point about how to think about the project I conducted as part of the Timescapes QLR network. How does it fit into the seminar’s narrative given that we had used visual methods to study psychosocial temporalities and subjectivities – see reference below. [Henwood, K., Shirani, and Finn, M. (2011). “So you think we’ve moved, changed, the representation got more what?” Methodological and analytical reflections on visual (photo-elicitation) methods used in the men-as fathers-study.” In P. Reavey (Ed.) Visual Methods in Psychology: Using and Interpreting Images in Qualitative Research, chapter 22 pp330-345.]

There was a good deal of discussion, from different disciplinary perspectives, of matters of “value”. Curiously, the turn to affect was not mentioned as a corollary to this, although considerable interest was shown in studying everyday evaluative statements and what matters to people. I would note, on reflection, that the latter are sometimes considered within efforts to study affective practice, although this aspect of the practice turn was not mentioned at the seminar to my knowledge. This may be because the turn to affect is most often associated with non-representational theory (which can be a bit obscure and hence difficult for social researchers to take on board). It is noteworthy, though, that Margie Wetherell has already produced an excellent book mapping out the wider theoretical issues at stake. Over time I have also made efforts to develop appropriate methodologies for researching people’s evaluative, moral and local concerns, and affect.  The following references might be useful as resources to look at given that the subsequent seminar on practices may be considering different ways of theorising about affect (as subjectivity and performance).

Wetherell, M. (2012) Affect and Emotion: A New Social Science Understanding Sage

Henwood, K.L. (2008). “Qualitative research, reflexivity and living with risk: Valuing and practicing epistemic reflexivity and centring marginality.” Qualitative Research in Psychology, 5(1) 45-55.

Parkhill, K., Henwood, K., Pidgeon, N. and Simmons, P. (2011) “Laughing it off: Humour, affect and emotion work in communities living with nuclear risk”, British Journal of Sociology, 62 (2) 324-346.