PLURALISING RESEARCH METHODS

Professor Judy Brown

Methods for identifying, analysing and engaging competing perspectives

• Q methodology

• “What’s the problem represented to be?” – Carol Bacchi

• Situational analysis – Adele Clarke

Q Methodology “[Q methodology] begins with the notion of finite diversity. Its starting-point is that all worked and working knowledge is manifold – a heterogeny in disputation, a set of views, a range of voices, a clutch of discourses… ‘[T]he invisible hand’… need not (generally, does not) work to insure free and fair competition between… understandings… empowered knowledge is the favourite – and the knowledges of Others… take the long odds that typify outsiders, if they get to the starting-post at all. Q methodology permits us to hear those muted voices as well as the dominant ones” (Stainton Rogers 1995: 183).

“What’s the Problem Represented to Be?” • Methodology to facilitate critical examination of public

policies • Starting premise – “what one proposes to do about

something reveals what one thinks is problematic (needs to change)” (Bacchi 2012: 21)

• “[P]olicies and policy proposals contain implicit

representations of what is considered to be the ‘problem’ (‘problem representations’)” (Bacchi 2012: 21)

• Task in ‘WPR’ analysis - read policies to understand “how the ‘problem’ is represented within them and to subject this problem representation to critical scrutiny” (Bacchi 2012: 21)

WPR Analysis “1. What’s the ‘problem’ [e.g. of ‘gender inequality’, ‘climate change’] represented to be in a specific policy or policy proposal?

2. What presuppositions or assumptions underpin this representation of the ‘problem’? 3. How has this representation of the ‘problem’ come about? 4. What is left unproblematic in this problem representation? Where are the silences? Can the ‘problem’ be thought about differently?

5. What effects are produced by this representation of the ‘problem’? 6. How/where has this representation of the ‘problem’ been produced, disseminated and defended? How has it been (or could it be) questioned, disrupted and replaced? Apply this list of questions to your own problem representations.” [SELF-PROBLEMATISATION!!] Bacchi (2012: 21)

Other examples of “sensitising questions” • How is accounting and sustainability approached? Whose

perspectives, goals and values are prioritized?

• How are sustainability issues bounded? What spatial and temporal scales are used?

• Which properties of sustainability are prioritized? How is incomplete knowledge addressed?

• What styles of appraisal are favoured? Do they close down or open up alternative framings/pathways?

• What governance, policy and mobilization processes close down or help open up alternatives?

• What are the implications of this frame for non-shareholder constituencies? Brown & Dillard (2014 - adapted from Leach et al. 2010: 158-59)

Situational Analysis • Situational analysis “allows researchers to draw

together studies of discourses and agencies, actions and structures, images, texts and contexts, histories and the present moment to analyze complex cases in depth” (Clarke 2010: 870).

• Key analytic goal – “to understand the situatedness and relations of action and interaction” in the situation of inquiry (Clarke 2010: 870).

• By constructing 3 types of maps: situational maps, social worlds/arenas maps and positional maps

Social worlds/arenas/discourses framework • “We assume multiple collective actors (social

worlds) in all kinds of negotiations and conflicts in a broad substantive arena focused on matters about which all the involved social worlds and actors care enough to be committed to act and to produce discourses about arena concerns. In this broader situation, there are also individuals, an array of nonhuman and hybrid actors…, discourses on related topics (narrative, visual, historical), and so on…. [A]ll actors have their own perspectives and commitments vis-à-vis the situation/arena articulated through discourse” (Clarke 2005: 37-8).

• Humans as meaning-making beings

• Language and discourses key in understanding social practices – help constitute identities/subjects/subjectivities – affect what we see as possible/acceptable – reinforce existing practices – enable new imaginings and practices

• Conceptual focus on contingency – “things can

always be otherwise” – without underestimating power relations

• “Arenas are discursive sites in often complicated ways. Particular social worlds are constructed in others’ discourses as well as producing their own…. [L]ong-standing [arenas] will typically be characterized by multiple, complex, and layered discourses that interpolate and combine old(er) and new(er) elements in ongoing, contingent, and inflected practices. Furthermore, because perspectives and commitments differ, arenas are usually sites of contestation and controversy, especially good for analyzing both heterogeneous perspectives/positions on key elements, and to see power in action” (Clarke 2005: 38).

Situational Maps • Identify the main elements in the situation and

analyse their inter-relations

• Drawing on the researcher’s (developing) understanding and as identified by others in the situation

• Key questions: Who and what are involved in this situation? Who and what matters? To those directly involved in the controversy? To researchers? To those affected by decisions taken? Who and what “makes a difference” in this situation?

– Which individuals, groups, organizations, institutions are involved/affected?

– What ideas, concepts, discourses, symbols, sites of debate matter?

– Which issues are most controversial? To whom? Why?

– Who or what things are involved in producing knowledge about these issues?

– What other elements (e.g. technologies, key historical events) matter?

Non-Human Actant A

Discourse on “N”

Fig 1: Abstract situational map – messy/working version Source: Clarke (2005: 88).

Infrastructural Element #1

Idea/Concept 1

• Base assumptions – “Situatedness” of all knowledge/understanding/action – At least potentially everything in the situation affects

everything else in some way – Situations are emergent/dynamic/always changing

• What discourses are at work in the situation? How do they frame contested issues/concepts differently?

• Who or what supports/opposes particular discourses? Provides knowledge or other resources to produce, maintain and disseminate them?

• What are the productive effects of these discourses?

How do they shape social identities/subjectivities? What and who do they render invisible? How do they enable or constrain different actors?

• How and where do discourses ‘travel’? Locally,

nationally, transnationally? How do they change? How do politics/power relations manifest themselves?

• Relational analysis: How are different elements inter-related? How do they condition/co-construct each other? What are the processes involved? – What discourses do actors draw on? With what

effects? – What ideas/concepts/symbols matter? – How do technologies enable or constrain actors? – Role of professions/legislation/media in

producing understandings? Influences on them? – Relations between historical/contemporary

debates?

SEA as a reform movement within mainstream accounting?

Securities & Investment Commissions

Mainstream accounting

Investors/Stock Exchanges

Environmental Groups

Labour Unions

Indigenous peoples

• Discourses – business case/ stakeholder accountability/critical

• Technologies • State/regulatory bodies/courts • Education /research/media • History, political economy etc. etc.

• Situational maps are not static!!! Situations change as… – people negotiate/reposition – discourses travel – new ideas are developed – legislation/policy changes – new technologies are developed – particular actors come and go – physical environment/political economy changes – etc. etc…..

• Redraw maps to depict the fluidity of

situations….

Social Worlds/Arenas Maps • Lays out collective actors and arena(s) in which they

participate – sites of (inter)action. • Empirical questions: Who cares about what? What

are they doing about it? What do they hope to achieve? What claims are they making? How do they endeavour to gain legitimation? Establish/break down boundaries with other social worlds? Present themselves and others? Using what discursive and other resources? What are the controversies? Silences?

• Meso-level interpretations of situation – focus on social, organisational and institutional dimensions

• Assumptions:

– cannot assume the directions of influence

– boundaries are open and porous

– negotiations are fluid and ongoing

– “negotiations” of many kinds – debate, education, persuasion, bargaining, coercion

– things could always be otherwise

P1

Privte

THE HOSPITAL ARENA

P7 P8

Patients P1

P4 P2

Hospital Nursing Worlds

P5 P3

US Health Care Domain

Private Insurance Companies

Medical Technology & Hospital Supply

Industries

Public Insurance

Big Pharma Hospital Physicians

Worlds

Hospital Management

World

Other Hospital Staff Worlds

Info Tech Worlds

Management Consulting

Firms

Fig 2: Social Worlds/Arenas Map: Nursing Work in the Hospital Arena Source: Clarke (2005: 118)

P9 P6

Positional Maps • Range of positions taken and not taken on contested

issues • Positions not articulated in terms of particular

individuals, groups or institutions

• Aim to represent full range of discursive positions – dominant and alternative perspectives

• Allows multiple, ambivalent and/or contradictory

positions to be represented

• By showing positions not taken helps identify “silences” in situation

Fig 3: Mapping Positionality

Position 2 - Business Case for

SEA

Position 1 – No Business Case for SEA

Position 3 – Stakeholder -Accountability

Missing Position in

Data?

Missing Position in Data?

Sources of change – working inside/outside “mainstream” accounting?

+++ Level of change required to accounting e.g. need for SEA ---

Further data gathering required - critical perspectives?

Not surprising?

“Inside” “Outside”

Social World X

Arena

Fig 4: Abstract Perspectival Project Map: The Arena According to Social World X Source: Clarke (2005: 201)

Social World A

Social World B

Social World C

Social World D

Social World E

There’s a lot going on out there and this has just been some of it….

– “… the ‘WPR’ approach steers the researcher through the analytical process in a coherent yet flexible way that appreciates each project’s individuality and the need to foreground particular aspects of the methodology dependent on the research focus” (Marshall 2012: 62).

– “Situational analysis offers another toolbox from

which researchers will likely take a little of this and a little of that. Tools are to be used. Have fun” (Clarke 2005: 304-05).

• And off to Workshop 3….