Reflection on Luker, Chapters 4-5

I found Luker's warning about the difference between a research interest and a research question very eye-opening and also worrisome. In the beginning stages of research, it can be hard to figure out a specific question, especially if your area of interest is broad and the literature expansive. It seems especially confounding for qualitative research that aims to answer subjective questions. Coming from a Psychology background, I have a strong interest in mental health issues. Concepts such as mental well-being often seem quite abstract, and to define them brings about issues of interpretation. For example, how does one measure self-esteem? When the variables and effects that you are studying reside internally within human beings, how do you observe them?

Self-report measures are the only option I can think of at present, although I will need to investigate this further. Is this method valid? Certainly asking someone what their level of "well-being" is makes more sense than to observe their behaviour and assign a level of well-being to them. Internal thoughts, beliefs, and feelings often do not translate to behaviours, which are motivated by many other things such as social expectations and external goals. On that note, reporting a feeling can itself be considered a behaviour, and is very different from the actual event of emotionality. This is an issue that does not seem to have an easy answer.

Avoiding the Pigeonhole

On page 56, Luker touches on the attractiveness of using a "linear" research model to mask one's social science as "normal science." Over the past decade (or so), there has been a calculated push toward multidisciplinarity in many of the social sciences, and a resulting backlash has emerged recently. The backlash is, of course, predictable, and echoes many of the arguments made in the quantitative vs. qualitative wars. At the root is the search for relevance. Relevance leads to - or helps persuade people of - big t Truth, or so we're led to believe!
I'm an unabashed multidisciplinarian. I changed my major 7 times while pursuing an undergraduate degree, then returned 10 years later to take what were, on paper at least, totally unrelated courses. I am now pursuing graduate education in a field seemingly unrelated to my background, and I plan to pursue research that has no real "home" in Information Studies, but draws from a number of different wells.

What I am worried about is something that seems to happen to multidisciplinarians as they mature: they get pigeonholed into publicly commenting on whatever area of their research they become most known for, and often end up becoming grounded in said area.
Someone who I have been inspired by over the years is Donna Haraway, a multidisciplinarian to the truest letter of the word. Haraway is a trained biologist who resisted the path of a "true" scientist by, first, emerging as a primatologist - but also as an historian of science at the same time - and then as a cyborg theorist/cyborg feminist, and later as a feminist technoscientist and cyberculture theorist. Now, Haraway is a "theorist" to some, a "feminist technoscientist" to those interested in feminism... but never a primatologist, or a biologist. Why? Because she defies classification? Or, specifically because she is claimed by constituents of particular fields? Is Haraway no longer a scientist? Has she been pigeonholed into the category of "feminist theorist" because it produces the sexiest headlines? Why is she not a scientist AND theorist who happens to have a very broad understanding of biology, constructivism, feminism, and cyborg anthropology, and can masterfully draw links between these fields in her research? I worry that inter/multidisciplinary is becoming a dirty word again. Why does an academic or researcher have to be an "expert" in one narrow, and some would argue limited, field? Does a lack of peripheral vision and an adherence to specific rigid methodology really produce the best and most easily quantifiable "results." I reluctantly acknowledge that there is careful dance between the ideas of exploration and explanation, but I honestly wish that academia does not trend back toward the narrow. More Issac Asimovs! More Grace Hoppers! Let the age of the polymath dawn again!!

Truth, Poststructuralism, and Salsa Dancing

As a former philosophy student I couldn't resist wading into the big-T Truth debate. The history of philosophy is more or less a reflection of the debate that took place in class: a multitude of opinions, some of them interesting but, in the end, none more conclusive than the other. Conclusiveness is important: a lot of the time "Truth" (big-T) is used as a synonym for conclusiveness in so far as "Truth" is taken to be something that is the case everywhere and for all time. But if you asked someone the question 'is there anything that is the case everywhere and for all time?' you are bound to get answers that are wildly different than if you asked 'what is the Truth?'. Many of the responses that were elicited in class wouldn't really make sense if they were elicited in the context of the former question rather than the latter. So when Professor Grimes asked people about Truth what did they take the word "Truth" to mean? It seems that everyone has their own private definition. For me this is the key to the problem: the word 'Truth' has no referent, or has too many referents, and yet we make no effort to establish how we're using the word before we try to define it. In short, I think Truth is an utterly dysfunctional word that is loaded with so many associations and meaning for most people that using it only creates problems (and adresses none). The sooner we stop using it the sooner we can start discussing questions that are interesting and potentially meaningful.

Which brings me to Poststructuralism. Mentioned by Luker on page 34, Poststructuralism more or less takes the position that I present in the above paragraph: that there isn't really anything that is the case everywhere and for all time (and therefore, truth is relative and Truth irrelevant). But that's not to say that truth is entirely relative: rather, what one regards as being true is determined (or informed) by one's context: one's time and place, knowledge and beliefs, etc. Poststructuralism seems to be an essential component of the method proposed by Luker. As such, salsa dancing is a metaphor for the contextual awareness theorized by Poststructuralism, the same kind of situatedness required when dancing. Luker's list of associations with salsa dancing (page 3) include: "holistic," "attentive to context," "conceptually innovative," "methodologically agnostic," "socially embedded". One word I might add to this is dynamic: when I imagine a salsa dancing or a poststructuralist social researcher I imagine someone that is situated in a constantly changing environment but who has the dynamism required to constantly adapt themselves and their methods in accordance with the given environment; someone that can, in a sense, go with the flow.

And that's really all that Poststructualism is proposing: that the world is more like a dynamic salsa dance (or perhaps more like a packed dance club) than it is like a stable, well-rehearsed ball (you know, where all of the canonical sociologists hang out). Therefore, the pursuit of stable, static concepts such as Truth in a dynamic, poststructuralist world is a bit like trying to perform a very stuffy ballroom routine in a sweaty, surging club -- to do so is to ignore the rhythm of the time and place.

There's hope for librarians yet!

Since starting at the iSchool two weeks ago, during most class and tutorial discussions, a certain question keeps popping up: what does the future hold for librarians? Most of my fellow classmates are of the belief that the Internet has effectively rendered a librarian unnecessary.

Since we are literally unable to keep up with the constant overflow of information, I feared I had just committed two years and almost $20,000 only to find myself with no job and no prospects. Until I read Chapter 5, page 85-6.

Luker devotes nine paragraphs to urging prospective salsa-dancing social scientists to make friends with a reference librarian as an essential component of their research. She subverts the previously mentioned argument to say that, in the age of "info--glut," librarians are the only ones who can navigate the haystack and help a researcher locate the proverbial pearl.

If the future of research is salsa-dancing, there's hope for me yet!

What exactly does " salsa dancing social science research" mean?

Further to our in-class discussion on the capital truth in the past Monday, I have looked up the Oxford and Longman online dictionaries for the identification of “truth”. Here are my findings:

(Oxford) “a fact or belief that is accepted as true”

(Longman) “an important fact or idea that is accepted as being true”

All I am trying to say here is that “truth” has to be “accepted” to be “true”. In my eyes, the most important part is about the notion of acceptance, which is contextualized by the truth believers based on their own social, cultural or political perspectives. Therefore, I am not surprised to see all kinds of “exceptions” alongside the “truths” all the time. To me, it is the perspective that matters.

So what kind of perspectives shall I hold to become a “salsa dancing social science researcher”? What exactly does “salsa dancing social science research” mean? Luker (2008) has briefly introduced the ideas of “public sociology” and “critical sociology” at the very beginning (2). Now that I am reading her book all the way down to Chapter 5, along with my exploration of her fascinating “working smarter” research methods and the various innovative online research databases, I cannot help tracing back to the identification of this “salsa dancing social science research”. Luker mentioned that a salsa dancing researcher is “the pioneering person” in his or her research area (83). Does it mean to challenge the main stream “truths” by bringing up those deemed as “exceptions” or “leftovers”? Does it need to have a political and anti-mainstream nature?

I Actually Want to Talk About Aliens.

Following Luker's metaphor of “framing” or “inserting yourself into the conversation” I began to think about my current research interest – open data and personal revelation as an act of altruism, empathy or “charitable donation”. In terms of the current conversation in my particular interest area I came to realize quite a bit exists, albeit in seemingly unrelated ways. Some particular frames that exist both academically and professionally consist of gift economies, the open source software movement, and crowdsourcing. Academically, gift economies and the social theorists that constitute its studies most accurately align with my interests.

The difficulty arises when I attempt to link personal revelation as a reciprocally altruist act in relation to some real world phenomena. It doesn't appear to explicitly exist yet; however I believe that framing personal revelation in this manner will become an important rhetorical device in the solicitation of that data. Think about organ donation, petitions, and as Brian Harding mentioned, the debate surrounding the long-form census. Where then does my research interest fit? In science fiction books where the ubiquitous web-of-things senses every facet of our existence? Perhaps within economics where the idea of social capital is prominent. Maybe the next step is personal non-monetary or asset-backed capital? How may I insert myself into a conversation wherein it appears that my would-be topic of discussion is a serious academic discussion of aliens?

Reflection on Knight, pp. 1-15

The part of Knight’s article that impressed upon me the most was his emphasis on habitual private writing. Every November for the past 8 years I have signed up for NanoWriMo, a literary project wherein one vows to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. The values of this project are enthusiasm and perseverance – quantity is at the forefront of expectation and quality merely an afterthought. It is a liberating exercise that forces the writer to abandon all pretensions of perfection; there is no time to tweak endlessly, and it soon becomes apparent that fear of mistakes and productivity are mutually exclusive.

Knight explains that the lecturers who publish the most are the ones who write almost daily, whereas the ones who publish the least are those who wait for clear blocks of time. In reflecting upon my own work habits, I can see that I have often fallen into the latter trap of misguided perfectionism leading to deleterious deferral of action. It will be my goal this semester to finally shed my bad habit of waiting to write. Indeed this blog itself will be a measure of success.

On the path of discovery

When I came across the example in Salsa Dancing about Frank Luntz calling for the need to employ both the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ into research (p 38), I was reminded of something a former professor of mine said to my class. He told us that our jobs as historians (it was a Polish history class) was not simply to describe an event, but to explain why things happened the way they did. In terms of social research, I suppose this translates into why things happen the way they do, which means taking in as much information about something as possible, and with a critical eye analyzing, contextualizing and somehow turning it into something… which is really daunting. But also kind of exciting! Luker also mentions the “logic of discovery” (p 39) as being part of research and I couldn’t agree more. Who hasn’t begun a project hoping to find/prove one thing and then actually discovered something different (and hopefully better)? Having said this, I’m still on the search for a good research proposal topic...

Caitilín

The ever elusive Truth....

Truth is a term that has been bandied around so often that it has almost lost all meaning. What is Truth? Is there even one Truth with a capital T, or multiple truths? And as one of my classmates rightly pointed out, let's say you discover Truth...then what?

The overwrought cliche, "Truth is in the eye of the beholder," seems like the closest we can ever come to a Truth. Everyone's truth is different; I personally know people who hold ideas that are ridiculous by any stretch of a sane person's imagination, and yet despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, these people remain as steadfastly convinced of these ideas as they are of their own names. To them, these ideas are the absolute truth. And if followers of the school of canonical sociology are following, as Luker put it, a logic of verification as opposed to discovery, then they approach their question with a possible answer already in mind, and they are simply setting out to hopefully confirm that answer. Does that bring them any closer to discovering truth? Does the 'salsa-dancing' method? Maybe Truth is as Luker said, an unattainable but nevertheless noble goal to strive for, sort of like world peace.

Truth in Advertising?

The notion of "Truth" is spinning in my mind after the lecture this morning. By way of background I come to this graduate program from a 16 year career in advertising and marketing and an undergraduate degree in psychology, so the notion of "truth" has left me cynical and a little battle scarred.

I've had extensive experience in creating and participating in dozens of product and consumer based research projects -- both qualitative and quantitative.

I have to admit that when I was reading Luker's description of qualitative techniques as "unscientific, soft and (although people rarely say this out loud) feminine" (pg.25) I was cheering! Actually cheering. Perhaps it's because I'm jaded having been led astray to develop unsavoury products and produce some of the worst creative ever developed after sitting in focus groups for 3 consecutive nights, or, perhaps it's because of the enormous shift I've seen in the approach to research over the course of my career. But whatever the reason I find myself definitely biased toward the quantitative methods in the search for "truth".

The shift in method over the course of my career has gone from qualitative "disaster checking" creative or product concepts to rigorous survey and data-mining approaches to better understand the consumer mind sets (to then categorize them), then understand the consumer needs and what "keeps them up at night" and subsequently create products and services based on those needs. This has been the process for "truth" as superficial as it seems and it has been deemed unacceptable in my discipline to simply put 12 people together in a room, give them some snacks, and ask them. We've had to develop surveys, draw from other sources (Stats Can data for example) etc... to put together a picture of whom these groups of people are and what they want. And then...find more of them!

I very much look forward to letting go of some of my professional bias to further explore "truth" in a context much broader and bigger than the confines of my previous career (and clients) have allowed for. Suzanne.

About the Week 1 Reading (Knight:pp.1-15)

At this point I still don't have a clear mind about what I would like to research on, but I can at least talk about some of my thoughts on our assigned reading of the past week. Most of the research method ideas discussed on the Knight chapter (pp.1-15) are familiar to me, but I disagree with Knight's "coping strategy" of "geographical restriction"(12). Knight addresses that "a good coping strategy" is to go for the published papers in your own country first and then the foreign ones (12-13). I will argue it all depends on your research topic. For example, when I was doing my independent study on multi-culturalism at the Art Gallery of Ontario in the past summer, I had been hitting the wall until an Australian paper and a German report finally spoke to me. After that, I had to make a museum study field trip to New York so as to tell the difference between " good" and "great" and finally got the idea of creative multi-cultural approaches in a fine art gallery. Personally, I prefer to compare domestic and abroad research reports so as to inspire my own research ideas.

A brief introduction...

...brief because I already used up this week's quota commenting on Mike's post.

While I haven't quite narrowed down a specific focus for my work, I intend to write a thesis in the general area of interpretation, critical thinking, and research (or a kind of research of research, I suppose). The process by which we form systems of knowledge, beliefs, and values -- and, perhaps more importantly, the processes by which we continually modify those systems over time -- is fascinating to me. I'll be looking more specifically at how different technologies affect these processes and what the implications are for human cognition and for society. Yes, I realize this is huge, I'm working on it...

I'm looking forward to working with all of you.

Brian Harding

The Value of Open Data

Media coverage of privacy issues online tend to focus on the negative aspects of open data. My interests deal with the positive economic, environmental, medical and social implications of open data - among others. However, given the negative connotations associated with personal revelation generally, and the dominant usage of that data throughout the marketing industry, I want to reframe the debate in a way that could situate personal revelation as a form of altruism or empathy.

First it is important to discover whether there is an empirical correlation between personal revelation and altruism. Would you divulge your granular energy consumption habits if that data could reduce inefficiences, thereby reducing carbon emissions? Would you share your personal health records - within logic and reason - if that data could provide scientists with the opportunity to make significant correlations, which were previously impossible?

These are a few of the questions that I find interesting. Hopefully SSHRC finds them equally as interesting.

Personal Introduction

I was first attracted to the Master of Information program because of my childhood dream of becoming a librarian. I spent a lot of time in libraries as a youngster -- I lived within walking distance to three branches of the Toronto Public Library. While I can credit this proximity for facilitating my interest in librarianship, it also creates a dangerous corollary: my image of what a librarian is and does is largely informed by personal experiences with public and school librarians. Thus, one of my major goals this semester is to expand my understanding of the different types of librarians – the work they do and where they do it.

Otherwise, some of my major interests include digital libraries, instructional design, web 2.0 and library 2.0, and what may be considered the more technical (and technological) aspects of librarianship. I plan to focus on the LIS stream and also take courses in IS&D.

Blog post 1

You can tell I'm great with coming up with creative blog post titles! The idea was that we use our first post to introduce ourselves, so I'll just do that. I'm a first-year MIS student, coursework option, Library and Info St stream, main interests are public policy, intellectual freedom, and government censorship and regulations with respect to individual access to information. I hope to complete a second MA and eventually pursue a career in the public library system. My reasons for taking this course are: 1) it's required 2) Being a librarian is all about having and imparting research skills, and I hope to improve mine through this course.