Week 7

With Blythe's “Composing Activist Research,” I found it interesting to think about the complications of “wicked problems” and how they beget other “wicked problems.” It's vital to see the complexity before teasing-out and then addressing the different parts, with as much compassion as possible, in order to prevent more problems from emerging. Patience and dedication must come before meeting immediate deadlines. Also, how do we overcome our work being seen as service instead of research (278)? Blythe suggests that we use unconventional methods. Maybe when we come up with studies that should truly be long-term, we need be transparent in our proposals that we intend to stick with this study for the long haul. “What is true for service learning is true for activist research... Many problems that a community faces are long term exigencies that cannot be resolved in a 16-week semester” (279). If I'm reading correctly, sometimes this will mean that what we publish will have to be a snapshot or glimpse into a larger, ongoing work, in order for us to facilitate compassionate research. Certainly, no matter what, sound ethics have to be woven throughout the epistemology and methods. Ultimately, we have to employ a Edmond Jabèsian epistemology toward research practices: research is cyclical, always inviting more questions and engaging in conversations.

Meanwhile, Teston's “Considering Confidentiality in Research Design” offers more insights into how this long-term process can look. On page 315, for instance, she states, “any theories built [during the research process] are the result [...] of months' worth of data collection, coding, and comparisons and not a result of having cherry-picked specific data points in order to prove a hypothesis and x,y, or z.” This statement certainly supports Blythe's conclusions above. I think that Teston's insight is a helpful reminder that we researchers, new or seasoned or somewhere in the middle, aren't just going to pick and choose what works and what doesn't in terms of answering our research questions. However, I worry that we aren't paying enough attention to human error. Teston is requesting that we fully trust the researcher and his/her choices and rely on the researcher’s “personal worth as an observer and interpreter” (pp 308). That said, I have little issue appreciating and finding Teston’s research creditable. Her work seems thorough, complex, and respectful of the communities involved. However, I believe we should acknowledge that as readers, we assume that the researcher’s interpretation of events is “the whole truth” when it comes to researching these types of sites, especially if we readers are not fluent in the Discourses or genres that are being examined. Nevertheless, Teston does take a lot of time being transparent about her privileged position by stating that her methods allow for her research to be reviewed but not replicated. She also states that she is not presenting a protocol, and her work is quite reflexive in that she takes us through her entire research process. I simply think that we should be careful to acknowledge our own responsibility in believing someone else's research wholesale and what we compromise in doing so, particularly with regards to sites in Discourses outside our initial expertise.

Grabill’s “Community-Based Research and the Importance of a Research Stance” adds further complication to this notion of accountability and perhaps my concerns about human error. There's a difference between traditional research and community-based research, according to Grabill, and he does an interesting job explaining that dichotomy. I'm interested in his thoughts on using ethnography as a method to highlight a need for community outreach, the genuine development of relationships. So often we've read “community-based” studies that seemed to suggest that the community was abandoned after the project was finished. I'm reminded of Blakeslee and Fleischer's discussions of building rapport at the site and how developing relationships with the community you're researching is important. Considering how our research affects participants in the long-term is something that should take center stage in our planning and designing. In a sense, by keeping our 'felt difficulties' in mind throughout our research process, we're allowing for research that is richer and wider in scope and influence; I think there might be a tendency to move slightly past our initial reasons for wanting to explore something once we're out collecting and interpreting data. Perhaps we can keep those “wicked problems” Blythe talked about at bay if we're constantly checking-in and not taking participants and information for granted.