Observational Methods Approaches to Research OMAR Advantages ProcessPractices

Observational Methods/ Approaches to Research (OMAR): Advantages, Process/Practices and Analysing Narratives. Paul Simpson simpsonp@edgehill. ac. uk

Ethnographic tradition

Aims 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. What are OMAR? Develop ideas about how they could be used and a critical understanding of various approaches. Why use them – develop understanding of theoretical and methodological (i. e. philosophical underpinnings) advantages of OMAR and consider their value for your own research. Answer criticisms of OMAR and how to prevent, minimise or manage challenges, including ethics and politics of research. Consider ways of analysing text/narratives generated through OMAR. To address/answer your particular issues?

Groups/pairs Take 10 to: 1. note what comes to mind when you think of ethnography & participant observation? 2. Consider how you would generate accounts using such methods – what instruments could you use and what might they look like?

Basic distinction/ideas Ethnography – immersed in a culture(s)/realm(s) Participant observation (PO) – instrumental, ‘quick and dirty’/hit and run’? Frozen in time? In ‘naturally occurring’ settings or are spaces produced? Iterative, non-linear and involve openness to unexpected, living with ambiguity and presume dynamic, multi-layered experience of cultures always in flux. Roles: (Raymond Gold’s typology 1958): Complete observer → Obs as participant → Participant as Obs → Complete Participant Covert Overt Degree of involvement in field/with participants

Approaches: J Van Maanen (1987). Think power relations. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. ‘Realist’ – mirror/underlying reality – focus on ‘done’ work. Revealing tacit/hidden by omniscient author. ‘Confessional’ – e. g. auto-ethnography (bridges constructionist, postmodern and feminist thinking) focusing on how the socially situated, accountable, reflexive ‘doer’ shapes account of shifting scenario. Has involve drawings, personal documents/writing (poems). ‘Impressionist’ – focus on ‘doing’/process - how story accomplished dynamically, inter-subjectively/interactionally (with people, animals, events, texts, artefacts, technology, documents, materials, settings etc. ) within power relations Multi-sensory (Pink, 2009) phenomenological but involving ‘the doer and the doing’ but avoiding over-focus on visual & focus on how senses work together, including unspoken ‘smellscapes’ and ‘soundscapes. ’ Involve the ‘sensing body’ of researched/researcher and ‘sensuous, affective (cultural) geographies. ’ Feminist – recuperative, egalitarian and focus on socially caused problems of women (Skeggs 1997). Questioned – differences between women. Eclectic – not mutually exclusive - strategic ‘pick and mix’ of/dialogue between tools available from various approaches to suit the research? Could also involve digital or cyber-ethnography. (Dicks 2005; Jupp 2006).

Get FIT schedule: generating narratives/accounts in gay village Feelings/Thoughts Interaction* Theory Relationships, language, reflexivity etc. Mnemonics own shorthand. Then written up in richly descriptive detail (Geertz 1973). Hexis? Habitus? Performativity? Normativity? Resistances Ethics of the self? Recorded mundane/muted as well as spectacular. Different rhythms and temporal legitimation of behaviour. Used minimally and mostly at later stage of formal analysis to avoid theoretical closure Form of early analysis

Midlife Gay Men and Ageing: a Mixed Model 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Covert (? ) participant observation (PO) in Manchester’s gay village with a semi-structured observation schedule. Selecting/sampling of time, different spaces, people and thematic foci for observation – 20 sessions (2 – 4 hours). Multi-sited and multivocal character of cultural experience. Impressionistic/phenomenological approach – interpretivism - ‘flows of power’ (Plummer 1995) but supplemented by an analytical framework involving Foucauldian constructionism (1979) ‘technologies of the self’ (critical humanism) but located in ‘fields of existence’ (Bourdieu 1984; Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992) (critical realism). Reality as product of ongoing tension between constraint and choice - beyond conformism/voluntarism. * Productive inter-subjectivity – insider knowledge (diasporic positioning) recognised people and spaces as dynamic and helped produce rich, detailed, contradictory accounts of bodily performance/movement that were evocative, plausible and transferrable. Dialogic narrative analysis/writing from various thematic/theoretical angles and, as an ethical/political concern, between my knowledge and participants’ – situated learning (Evans 2007). Also attended to content and structuring of stories (resources men drew on to story themselves).

Differentiated accounts Observation facilitated insights into varying accounts of ageing as a middle-aged gay man on Manchester’s ‘gay scene’: 1. Capitulation to age discourses/gay ageism 2. Negotiation with… 3. Transcendence of/challenge to… Narrative segments could involve all three.

Groups: ethics & politics Take 15 to consider: 1) what steps/precautions would you take if applying to the Faculty Ethics Committee to do observational research – what would be the key ingredients? 2) How do you think you could analyse narratives generated by OMAR?

Ethics and politics Access – rapport-building especially if outsider but insiders never complete & roles in tension. 2. Consent not once-and-for all – renegotiable. 3. British Sociological Association guidelines approve if sensitively handled and no other means of generating stories. See your professional/academic association’s guidelines. 4. Covert/overt blurred in practice but covert is best way of securing anonymity. 5. Harm/privacy/deception are not clear-cut – “situational ethics” (Goode 1996). Ethical tightrope? 6. Reflexivity: a) when writing about people/own account - authentic but not infallible. Fay, B (1996) “hermeneutics of suspicion”. We transform stories but whose story is it? (Gubrium and Holstein 2009); b) dialoguing with/learning from a community/group (Evans 2007); c) power relations fluctuate but don’t over/understate vulnerability. 1.

Analysing narratives generated by OMAR Lead by research puzzle & questions: 1. Rhetoric of enquiry (Hammersley & Atkinson 1995) – metaphor/analogy, frames, synecdoche, comparison and contrast to reach the nomothetic/idiographic when addressing themes/experiences. 2. Critical discourse/textual analysis/deconstruction – no objective reality, privileged knowledge but various truths constructed through text/language/performance. Involves laying bare of constituents of discourse. 3. Narrative/thematic analysis – content (and what’s missing) and structure of stories people tell through talk/body. How stories make sense of culture and how people ‘story themselves into existence’ (Plummer 1995). 4. Psychoanalytic (Hollway and Jefferson 2000) – ‘defended self’ (not transparent to itself) motivated by the desire not to know. 5. Multidimensional/level/perspectival reflexive analysis (Alvesson & Skoldberg 2009) – dialogic interplay between theories and forms/levels of interpretation.

Group work: analysis Take 15 to discuss: 1. What analytical tools/techniques/approaches could be used to make sense of stories generated through OMAR? 2. Which of the approach(es) or others could you use to make sense of the excerpts given? 3. What do you see in the excerpts/what’s your theoretical take on what is happening in them? How might your approach to analysis shape your interpretation of them?

Take-home messages Extent of involvement – can fluctuate Choose a style/approach that fits your research but build in critical reflexivity. Think of analysis strategy at various points. OMAR can generate detailed accounts that illuminate: a) the habituated, inhabited/tenanted, mobile body and how the world is constructed in/across contexts. Most approaches can avoid determinisms whilst recognising cultural rules/constraints on agency; b) multi-sited, multi-vocal, multi-layered, different, ambivalent, contradictory character of narration/reality. Enables a productive inter-subjectivity that can undergird claims to plausible and transferable knowledge. Ethics & politics are integral from conception, engagement, analysis, to write-up and beyond. Consider how you write about self in relation others and dialogue with their knowledges.

Questions, discussion, surgery?

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