Researching Culture: The Notion of Reflexivity - Coursework Example

RESEARCHING CULTURE: THE NOTION OF REFLEXIVITY Introduction In the context of social research reflexivity has been variously defined as “a turning back on oneself, a process of self-reference, and to the ways in which the products of research are affected by the personnel and process of doing research” These effects are found in all phases of the research project, from initial selection of the topic to the final reporting of results. While relevant for social research in general, issues of reflexivity are particularly significant in ethnographic research, in which the involvement of the researcher in the society and culture of those being studied is particularly close. Ethnography can be broadly interpreted as a research process based on field work using a variety of mainly qualitative research techniques, and including engagement in the lives of those being studied over an extended period of time. Ethnography is the eventual written product which draws its data primarily from this fieldwork experience, and as a result, ususally emphasizes descriptive detail (Davies, 1999: 4-5). The concepts of reflective and reflexive empirical research though sometimes used synonymously, reflexive research is considered as a method of reflective research. Thus, “reflexive research may be distinguished as a specified, particular version of reflective research, involving reflection on several levels or directed at several themes”, state Alvesson & Skoldberg (2004: 4). Reflexivity or reflection focuses on the way different kinds of linguistic, social, political, and theoretical elements are woven together in the process of knowledge development, during which empirical material is produced. Reflective research has two basic characteristics: careful interpretation and reflection. According to Chiseri-Stater (1996: 130), the distinction between reflexivity and reflection is that “to be reflective does not demand an ‘other,’ while to be reflexive demands both an other and some selfconscious awareness of the process of self-scrutiny” This paper proposes to critically discuss the notion of reflexivity and its implications in Researching Culture. Discussion Traditionally research has been regarded as the creation of true objective knowledge by following a scientific method (Alvesson & Skoldberg, 2004: 3). The data and facts presented help to acquire a basis for empirically grounded conclusions, which further generate generalizations and theory building. The two main methods of research are quantitative and qualitative, which are distinguished significantly as standardized and non-standardized respectively, though the dividing line between them is blurred. Another distingushing feature of qualitative research is that they start from the perspective of the subjects studied, while quantitative studies usually proceed from the researcher’s ideas about the dimensions and categories which should be focused upon. Qualitative methods are now well established in most of the Social Science disciplines (Alvesson & Skoldberg, 2004: 4). Reflexivity and Ethnographic Research: Research is done for investigating something outside of oneself, because the knowledge that is sought cannot be gained solely through introspection. For both social and natural sciences, this fact holds true, though in the case of natural sciences, the separation of researcher from research object is easier to achieve and is more self-evident. On the other hand, it is not possible to research something from which the researcher is completely isolated, or has no contact with. Hence all researchers are connected to some degree to a part of their research object. Depending on the extent of these connections, questions arise as to whether the results of research are a product of the researcher’s presence with its influence on the research process (Davies, 1999: 3). For the above reason, it is important to take reflexivity into consideration for all forms of research. Reflexivity is taken into account even in the most objective of sciences such as research in particle physics and in astronomy, where assumptions such as simultaneity of observations and events are considered. It is clear that reflexivity is of central importance in social research where the connection between researcher and research setting, is much closer and where the nature of research objects is that of conscious and self-aware beings. The influence of the researcher and the research process on the outcome is more likely and less predictable. Reflexivity is a significant issue in ethnographic research since the relationship between researcher and researched is typically even more closely integrated, long-term and multipurpose, and the complexities introduced by the self-consciousness of the objects of research have more scope and impact, states Davies (1999: 3-4). Self-Reflexivity: There are three ways researchers display self-reflexivity: describing decisions that were involved in selecting methods, laying out limits of knowledge or threats to validity in a study, laying out the researcher’s personal biases that might influence the conclusions. An essential key to understanding self-reflexivity is to understand the difference between the self and the other. This is especially important in audience research, where the local subject is the other person who is being studied. Researchers present their work as interpretive realism, by ignoring the role of self (Potter, 1996: 294). Reflexivity and Objectivity: There is a close relationship between reflexivity and objectivity, although the two concepts are not the same. Difficulties that arise from the use of reflexivity are countered by ensuring objectivity through reducing or controlling the effects of the researcher on the research situation. Attempts to ensure objectivity include maintaining distance through using observation and other methods by which interaction is kept to a minimum or is highly controlled. This is the positivist approach. On the other hand, by the naturalist methodology, objectivity is achieved by reducing the effects of the researcher on the results on the basis of a very high level of interaction, based on complete participation, sometimes to the extent of concealing the identity of the researcher (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995: 16-17). Even the most objective of social research methods are considered to be clearly reflexive. For example, survey research based on structured interviewing, can ensure a form of objectivity through training of interviewers to reduce the effects of their individual attributes on respondents, and employing technical tests of reliability. However, survey researchers cannot remove another fundamental form of reflexivity which is inherent in their construction of a highly artificial research situation: which depends on a set of cultural understandings as to the nature of interviews, their conduct and appropriate forms of responses to them. At the other extreme though, covert participation may eliminate the researcher’s influence, the effects of their presence on the results will only be rendered less visible (Davies, 1999: 4). Culture and Reflexivity: Culture is both product and process, states Jensen (2002: 5), and both aspects enter social structuration at large. The duality of culture may be illustrated through concepts from sports: time-out and time-in. In basket ball and foot ball, coaches can call for an interval to discuss strategy with their teams. The time-out which suspends the game for a short while, is part of the time frame of the game. Similarly, an institutionalized cultural activity such as media use partly suspends other activities but still takes place within the everyday, and with reference to families, parliaments and other well-known institutions. In different respects, news, soap operas, and talkshows offer a cultural forum for collective reflexivity. Time-in culture and time-out culture are not separate activities or discourses, but simultaneous and complementary aspects of media use and other everyday activities. According to Jensen (2002: 5), going to the cinema can be an occasion to reflect on personal situations in one’s life. Thus everyone moves back and forth between practical and discursive consciousness several times everyday, and these two processes are observed to be intertwined. The Role of Reflexivity in Research: Arber (2006: 147) carried out an ethnographic research study within a hospice in the United Kingdom. As both practitioner and researcher, she experienced a sense of dual identity while conducting the research. The author states that she had difficulties while managing the boundary in terms of closeness and distance in terms of the observer and participant roles adopted. She found that methods of reflexive accounting enhanced the credibility of such a study. Reflexivity is the capacity to reflect upon one’s actions and values during the research, when producing data and writing accounts, and to view the beliefs one holds in the same way in which the beliefs of others are viewed. Reflexivity is a characteristic of the ethnographic imagination and establishes the researchers’ integrity, which is part of good ethnographic practice. The dual nature of being a outsider as a researcher and an insider as a practitioner had an influence on the data collected (Arber, 2006: 147). One of the ways of enabling reflexivity is in keeping a fieldwork journal, so that theoretical perceptions, assumptions and emotional reactions can be recorded. Thus a tendency for self-absorption can be avoided, and understanding through self-reflection can be enhanced. By recording personal opinions, emotional responses, and responses to being an observer, the researcher is enabled to keep track of such events that may be useful later when looking for leads during analysis. According to Shacklock and Smith (1998: 204), reflexivity meant making visible the “suppressed culture of research activity” as opposed to making visible only its formal concept. “Suppressed culture meant the backstage reality of research life, from the first step of project selection and formulation, on to problems with access to the field, methodology and analysis, ethical dilemmas, constraint upon writing and publishing, and the critical intent of the wider research project”. It is the other side of the story, from that which appears as the formal published work. In the current power relations within the research enterprise or in institutions, being reflexive implies a form of intellectual vulnerability, which not many researchers want to be credited with. However, if educational and social research is supposed to be humane, reflexivity has to be adhered to. It is an essential part of the integrity of the research process. Pels (2000: 3) states that “one step up” reflexivity proposes to add only one level or dimension of self-reference, not more, in order to display the narrative’s hermeneutic point of departure and point of return. It resists all tendencies toward identification or reification which allow the spokesperson to disappear into the object (materialism) or the object into the spokesperson (idealism). “One step up reflexivity holds both representer and represented fully in view, continually monitoring their similarity and distance, their connectedness and tensionful difference”. On the other hand, Latour (1988) chooses to understand reflexivity as meta- and infra- reflexivity which strike a middle path between hyper reflexivity and the flatness of naturalistic storytelling which is written without any need for reflexive precaution or therapy. Pillow (2003: 175) supports the view that reflexivity is a method that qualitative researchers should use to legitimize, validate and question research practices and representations. The author identifies and discusses the problematics of four common trends in present-day uses of reflexivity: reflexivity as recognition of self, reflexivity as recognition of other, reflexivity as truth, and reflexivity as transcendence. The author states that there should be a move away from comfortable uses of reflexivity to what she terms uncomfortable reflexive practices and provides an overview of the work of three authors who practice reflexivities of discomfort. Practicing uncomfortable reflexivity interrupts uses of reflexivity as a methodological tool to get better data while tackling the complexities of doing engaged qualitative research. One of the most noticeable trends to come out of a use of reflexivity is increased attention to researcher subjectivity in the research process, with a focus on how information about the researcher as an identity, with thoughts and feelings, affects data collection and analysis. This emphasizes an acceptance and acknowledgment that “how knowledge is acquired, organized, and interpreted is relevant to what the claims are” (Altheide & Johnson, 1998: 283). The researcher’s subjectivity became open to scrutiny, along with objectivity coming under focus. This focus requires the researcher to be critically conscious through personal accounting of how their self-identification across race, class, gender, position, and interests influence all stages of the research process. Reflexivity then “becomes a continuing mode of self-analysis and political awareness” (Callaway, 1992, p. 33). This results in research that questions its owns interpretations and is reflexive about its own knowledge production towards the goal of producing better, less distorted research accounts. Reflexivity thus is often understood as involving an ongoing self-awareness during the research process which aids in making visible the practice and construction of knowledge within research in order to produce more accurate analyses of our research (Pillow, 2003: 178). Social Change and Self Identity: The self has undergone great transformations in keeping with supposedly radical social changes. Reflexive self awareness provides the individual with the opportunity to construct self identity without the impediments of tradition and culture which earlier created rigid boundaries to one’s self understanding. A number of developments also occur in related disciplines and approaches, such as Resource Mobilization Theory and Rational Choice Theory, which place a rational and calculating individual at the heart of their social analysis. Rational Choice Theory understands all social phenomena in terms of rational-based calculations made by self-interested individuals. Giddens’ is perhaps the most detailed account of the psychological dimensions of reflexivity. For Giddens, reflexivity has always formed an integral part of the self and social relations. According to Giddens, the reflexive monitoring of behaviour is expected by all members of society of others (Giddens 1976: 114). However, Giddens argues that a different sense of reflexivity can be attributed to post-traditional societies: “The reflexivity of modern social life consists in the fact that social practices are constantly examined and reformed in the light of incoming information about those very practices, thus constitutively altering their character…only in the era of modernity is the revision of convention radicalised to apply (in principle) to all aspects of human life” (Giddens 1990: 38-39). Thus whilst a radical individualization of the self is inferred, which indicates the possible extension of reflexivity into all realms of experience, this reflexivity, in theory and practice, is “embedded and socialized in ways which are all too easily overlooked”, states Adams (2003: 230). United States workers need to interact with individuals from many different cultures, due to the impact of globalisation and cultural diversity in the U.S. as well as international business operations. American expatriates’ inability to cope well in foreign lands, and to succeed in their work as expatriates is observed to be considerably high, more than that of their European and Asian counterparts, states Mateu (2005). This results in significant financial and human capital losses to U.S. organizations. The reason is considered to be ineffective intercultural skills, as apposed to lack of technical skills, due mainly to the cultural differences between the U.S. and Japan. Mateu (2005) examines how U.S. expatriates employ reflexivity, that is, self-analysis and adjustment, to manage cultural differences in Japan on a daily basis. The purpose of the research was to identify how expatriates make sense of experiences in their daily routines in the host country environment and their learning process. The goal was to identify and strengthen the knowledge that expatriates gain in the course of adapting to their assignments abroad. The study included issues like the particular processes that they employ to understand the different culture that they find in the new country, and how they dealt with traditional customs that they were unfamiliar with. Adams (2004: 387) takes up a critical discussion of Giddens’s (1990: 38-39) claim that an “extended self-reflexivity has emerged as a result of recent social upheavals, providing the individual with the opportunity to construct self-identity without the shackles of tradition and culture, which once limited the options for self-understanding and self-development”. Giddens’s emphasis on the declining role of fate, and the significance of “active trust” is argued to be inconsistent and incomplete. It is claimed that the culturally placed nature of modern identity is still essential to an understanding of selfhood. Concepts of fate are used to illustrate the persistence of a partially unreflexive relationship between self-identity and culture, and it is concluded that concepts of fate are just one example of the ways in which self-identity is still meaningfully culturally embedded. Global Dynamics and Reflexivity: Schweiker (2004: 13) states that a new preface for ethics is demanded in contemporary times, due to the massive changes brought about by globalisation. The lived structure of experience is explained by the comparative use of myths. The main features of the changing global dynamics are proximity, compression of the world, expansion of the consciousness and also global and cultural reflexivity. It is essential for people to orient their lives to the expanding globalisation. “It is a moral space defined by the massive extension of human power in the modern world”. A hermeneutical, interpretive approach is advocated by the author to cope with the challenge that global dynamics and the extension of human power now pose. It is considered essential that methods for developing global ethics should be formulated. This can be done by reflexivity and engaging ethically the Biblical myth of creation and its re-interpretation as an epitome of Jesus’ Torah teaching. The goal is to show how current religious thought can address tremendous challenges in a religious way (Schweiker, 2004: 13). Social Work, Culture and Reflexivity: Social work practice at the local level has been depending on Evidence Based Practice for its ongoing work. Lawler and Bilson (2004: 52) suggest a new approach to implementing a more reflexive and research aware social work practice in professional teams. The authors show that there has been a substantial focus on the responsibility of individual professionals for using best evidence to guide their practice and on the organisation to provide an environment and policies suited to evidence based practice. There is a need to balance this by an increased focus on the professional and team culture in which social work takes place. At the same time it is essential to encourage greater reflexivity and formulate a more open participative approach to the use of evidence to develop new practices in social work at the local level. On the other hand, evidence based research for social work practice is supported by Campbell (2006: 588). The concept of transforming social work practice is currently an important one, taking place simultaneously with the Every Child Matters government initiatives. There is a consensus that social work practice needs to change by drawing much more overtly upon evidencebased practice. The book by Jowitt and O’Loughlin (2006) that is reviewed by the author, is considered to be a beneficial one. It can contribute to the changing culture of demystifying evidence-based research for child-care teams, and building up the confidence of child-care social workers in actively using research in their assessments and interventions. Culture was an important factor that had a significant impact on social work, state Connolly et al (2005: 17). The centrality of culture is brought out as a crucial factor. In social work services, providing services that are culturally relevant is an ongoing challenge for all social workers, and a culturally sensitive model of child protection practice is needed to be formulated. In doing this, the authors state that more reflexive and research aware social work will prove to be effective in achieving the desired outcomes, as earlier stated by Lawler and Bilson (2004: 52). The authors state that culture has usually been equated with ethnicity, but they propose extending its meaning to include other forms of culture, e.g. organizational culture and theoretical culture. To them, “culture is understood to relate to some shared elements which connect people in a common way of experiencing and seeing the world” (Connolly et al, 2005: 17). These different cultures can impact on social work practice. “Child protection work is fraught with difficulties. When culture is added to the mix, the difficulty of the work intensifies and becomes infinitely more complex” (p.28). It is therefore important that child protection practitioners should develop proficiency and understanding in working with a diverse range of cultures. It is important to introduce effective strategies, by using reflexivity in the planning and formulation of interventions. The intention is to develop what the authors refer to as “culturally responsive practice”. Research in Human Resources Management and Organisational Culture: As in social work, media research and other areas, research on human research management in organisations is also benefited by a reflexive approach. Cunliffe (2003: 983) states that over the last twenty years, social science scholars have challenged “conventional conceptions of social reality, knowledge, and the validity of traditional methods of investigation. Many have criticized the aim of mainstream social science to provide an absolute, objective view of the world and have called for a reflexive stance in which we recognize all social activity, including research itself, as an ongoing endogenous accomplishment”. In organisational culture there is a crisis of representation, and a subsequent call for reflexive approaches to research. Contemporary organizational theorists are formulating methods of carrying out reflexive research. The implications of reflexive research would be that more comprehensive outcomes can be achieved, with a broader overview of action to be taken. Better organisational management and practice would result, since all significant criteria are likely to be studied through research. Conclusion This paper has highlighted the notion of reflexivity in ethnographic research, and the influence of culture. Globalisation and social change have impacted culture, hence reflexivity has a significant role in making research more comprehensive. The use of reflexivity is found to have profound benefits in conducting research in social work, human resources, religion, media management, and other areas of contemporary culture. References Adams, M. (2004). “Whatever will be, will be: Trust, fate and the reflexive self”. Culture and Psychology, 10(4): 387-408. Adams, M. (2003). “The reflexive self and culture: a critique”. British Journal of Sociology, 54(2): 221-238. Altheide, D. & Johnson, J. 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International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 16(1): 175-196. Potter, W. J. (1996). An analysis of thinking and research about qualitative methods. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Schweiker, W. (2004). “A preface to ethics: Global dynamics and the integrity of life”. Journal of Religious Ethics, 32(1): 13-37. Shacklock, G. & Smyth, J. (1998). Being reflexive in critical educational and social research. London: Routledge. Read More