One of the first tasks of the project in any one
place is to ask how members of communities themselves define community.
This gets community
participants and members to set out where ‘the community’ is
located and to compare this with conventional topographically-contained
notions of community.
Social Mapping
Social mapping is a research method which involves asking people to
plot out where they see the boundaries of their ‘space’.
This will be used to develop and refine our understanding of community
and place. This involves walking with and talking to people as they
move through defined spaces, and seeing how their understandings and
shaping of community is informed via their interactions and movements.
Such social mapping in the first instance will
be geared towards the central life-world themes
of the project (for example, where people work, meet,
eat, and play). These are then mapped against the
social themes of the project (for example,
what a given life-world theme such as work has meant
in the past and now), and then interpreted
in terms of a series of layers of social analysis that
form the theoretical level of our methodology (for example, broader
implications
about social formations at work in how people define
a given thematic).
In summary, the initial stage is to build up profiles of the different
communities and places that will be involved in the project. This will
be done by drawing on a range of sources through a variety of strategies.
This is then mapped against increasingly abstract modes of analysis.
Our intention is to move from the empirical to the abstract and back
again in a constant journey of return, testing each level against the
others.
Gathering the Evidence
Because of the diversity of the communities that will take part in
the project, a flexible toolbox of methods is required for gathering
research material. Our toolbox ranges across the following techniques:
Writing Social Histories
To complement these social maps, social histories will be written to
develop a sense of the larger composition of the community. This includes
finding out when and how the community came to be, as well as understanding
the impact of different formative events on the community. One point
of reference here will be, for example, conflict and violence, including
the way in which both frontier wars and/or involvement in overseas conflicts
have affected and shaped the community.
Writing Thematic Essays
Thematic essays involve the writer exploring some focussed aspect of social history or contemporary social life. It is a way of providing context for understanding contemporary social issues. For instance, in a city such as Sarajevo a thematic essay could take into account all kinds of celebrations and rituals from medieval times to the present associated with the social theme of ‘identity-difference’. In relation to a town such as Broadmeadows a thematic essay might take contemporary questions of ‘sport and leisure’ as its focus. In short, in focussing upon a locale (or locales) a thematic essay should directly address at least one of our social themes or life-world themes listed below. This might range, for example, from the social theme of ‘belonging-mobility’—perhaps discussed in relation to pressing social issue of refugees—to the life-world theme of ‘arts and symbolism’, perhaps discussed in relation to births and marriages. A thematic essay might stretch beyond any one locale to explore issues related to a life-world theme such as ‘place and environment’ or open up a discussion into dialectical issues contained in the social theme of ‘authority-participation’. Thematic essays can present the outcomes of thematic research and/or they can include elements of creative or lyrical writing on a theme.
Conducting Interviews and Strategic Conversations
We will use two particular kinds of semi-structured interviews to explore specific topics and themes with relevant community members; sometimes to capture deeper and more nuanced information about topics that are included in our survey questionnaires and sometimes to get a deep understanding of particular developments or projects within the community concerned.
In the first kind of interview—strategic conversations—considerable thought needs to go into the choice of people to be interviewed in relation to the nature of the topic. The taped interviews thus need to be preceded by background research and preliminary discussions with the interviewees. In such cases the interviewer plays a proactive and strategic role in the discussion of the researched topic. The term ‘strategic conversation’ indicates that an active dialogue has taken place in which the interviewer and interviewee have pushed each other, based on some prior understanding of each other’s views on the subject. A strategic conversation in this sense goes beyond the usual research interview where an interviewer faces an unknown respondent and asks them to answer a series of set questions on the designated topic.
Strategic conversations are supplemented by a second kind interview— response interviews. These are shorter discussions conducted with other people involved in the projects or developments that are relevant to the strategic interviews. These response interviews allow us to cross-reference the experiences of a range of people beyond those involved in the key strategic conversations.
Collecting Life-Histories and Stories
Collecting Stories and Life Histories
All kinds of stories already circulate in local communities and some untold stories deserve to go into broader public circulation. These can range from local histories and myths to oral histories to recent experiences and events. We are interested in eliciting local stories that are well-crafted and communicated as concisely as possible without losing their narrative richness. Such stories can be collected by community members, by ‘outside’ researchers, or by a combination of both. They can be collected in the form of written accounts or as ‘digital stories’ that combine images and audio. In many cases they will touch on more than one of the life-world or social themes listed below. Life histories are organized around individual life narratives that provide background and context to contemporary community life. They involve background research, lengthy interviews and collaboration with the subject to ensure that the story is told accurately and with a degree of depth and reflection relating to the life-world or social themes. They provide an opportunity to explore the ‘lived experience’ of changes over time and to capture dynamically-contextualized stories of local community life.
Eliciting Photographic Narratives
Another way of drawing community participants further into the project
is to use photography as tool. The approach that will be used is known
is reflexive photography. In this approach, community participant observers
are given a disposable camera and invited to take photographs of people,
places and things in their communities around the life-world themes outlined below. Reflexive photography assumes that community
members possess a great deal of ‘inside knowledge’ about
the communities to which they belong. Community participant observers
will also be invited to supplement their photos with meaningful photographs
from their own collections as well as other personal artefacts that
they believe expresses something about their community. They will also
be given a mini-photo album and will be asked to arrange their photos
and to think about the connections between them. The purpose of this
is to encouraging the community researchers to begin to construct reflexively
meaningful narratives about the places and events depicted in the photos.
Reflexive photography supplements one of the other research tools—interviews.
Collecting Community Life-Profiles
Community life-profiles are developed as a very concise version of a life history and/or a snapshot of local community life as it is experienced by individuals. They begin as interviews of ten to fifteen minutes that follow a schedule of questions relating to the subject’s direct experiences of the complexities and dynamics of local community life (relevant to the life-world or social themes listed below). The interviewer turns this into a concise narrative that is returned to the subject for amendment and approval. Because this process is not very time-consuming it is possible to collect a large number of such community life-profiles over time and they can be used as background data for a wide range of research interests.
Conducting a Survey Questionnaire
We have developed a questionnaire that is used as a quantitative indicator
drawing upon some of the life-world themes
and social themes of the project. The
questionnaire allows for comparative analysis across the different
places of research. Here we provide a printable copy of the questionnaire
that you can either open or download in English, Spanish (Español) and Bosnian.
The questionnaire uses a combination of 10-point Likert scales, multiple-choice questions and open-ended questions, and is designed to gather data from a large number of respondents. It can be used both as a mail-out self-administered questionnaire and as a structured interview schedule. The questionnaire will be analyzed by applying a commonly-used statistical analysis program.
Gathering Quantitative Data.
To provide context for other methods of data collection, a number of quantitative strategies are being used. We are developing systematic social profiles of each of the communities across the globe using community statistics or small-area data. These include demographic data at local government level, including population, age, culture, education, employment and income. This will be supplemented with data relating to mortality, morbidity rates and population health.
Collecting Relevant Policy Documents and Contextualizing Official Discourses
This refers to the ways in which communities are constituted via official
documents and reports, including those put out by civic and professional
organizations and representative bodies. These might include tourist
brochures and pamphlets, information regarding cultural activities and
events in the communities, business planning documents, health reports
and information and the like. Official discourse might also include
official mappings of community against which our social mappings can
be compared.
Life-World Themes
We have chosen a range of ‘life-world’ themes, social facts
and activities in everyday life. They are treated as broad categories
around which to base all our qualitative and quantitative research.
These are the primary categories that will be used directly in working
with community participants. They are as follows:- arts and symbolism
- celebration and ritual
- food and drink
- sport and leisure
- learning and education
- health-care and medicine
- work and money
- governance and law
- place and environment
- technology and resources
- conflict and violence
Social Themes
We have, in turn, chosen a range of ‘social’ themes, over-arching
issues that inform daily life over time and space. These will also inform
the direct work with community participants, but at a secondary level
of reflection on the research outcomes based on the life-world themes.
They are as follows:- identity-difference
- past-present
- wellbeing-wretchedness
- local knowledges-expert systems
- authority-participation
- belonging-mobility
- mediation-disconnectedness
- freedom-obligation
- equality-wealth distribution
- security-risk
Social Analysis
At the tertiary level, we move to a much more theoretical
level of academic reflection, based on a particular theorizsation of ‘modes
of practice’ (James 1996)—that is established sociological,
anthropological and political categories of analysis or ways of framing
the ‘things in the world’.
At the level of conjunctural
analysis, categories of production, exchange, organization, communication
and inquiry will be used in order to organize and give shape to the
information developed in the community profiles. We are interested here
in finding out how communities are structured and constituted through
these different ‘modes of practice’.
By such an exploration
this project will examine how communities embedded within specific locales
are linked into large flows of people, resources and information that
are prominent characteristics of the contemporary globalization.
Further,
we will determine how the sustainability of such communities is affected—either
adversely or positively—by such flows. The analysis will be drawn
into forms of social integration that are at work in the community.
The notion of integration here refers to the different ways in which
individuals are bound into community, ranging from the most concrete,
face-to-face forms of social integration to more highly abstracted modes,
via information technologies, for example.
While different modes of
integration may co-exist with one another—for example, the face-to-face
co-exists with email communication—they do not necessarily do
so in equal measure. One mode of integration
can tend to dominate other forms of integration, framing those other
modes in the process. Our
hypothesis is that different forms of integration
affect the sustainability of communities through time, with communities
that are structured primarily
through face-to-face social integration facing
particular challenges to sustainability in the contemporary conditions
of globalization.
Elaborating the Methodology
In the following documents we provide a further
explanation of the methodology as outlined thus far. The first document,
by Christopher
Scanlon, further elaborates on both the ways
in which the various research tools will be employed and also begins
to integrate an explanation of
the levels of theoretical analysis involved which
are named below. The second document is an excerpt from Paul James’s
Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism: Bringing Theory Back In (Sage 2006) which is the basis for the analytical
approach taken here
and which gives a precise theoretical categorization
of the levels of analysis.
A further translation of the methodology by Kate Cregan can also be found at www.critical-ethical.org.
Elaborating the Methodology I
Elaborating the Methodology II
Levels of analysis
Empirical analysis
The first level of analytical abstraction is
an ordering of ‘things
in the world’, before any kind of further analysis is applied
to those ‘things’. This is the level at which the research
materials are gathered, as outlined above. One
of the strengths of this method is that its insistence on reflexive
analysis forces us to separate
out the first, second and any further levels.
Conjunctural analysis
The second level of analytical abstraction involves
identifying and more importantly examining the intersection of various ‘modes
of practice’ (established sociological, anthropological and political
categories of analysis), or ways of framing the ‘things in the
world’ defined in the first level. The continuities or contiguities
between these modes are not generally well addressed
and to do so allows for a more complex and finely-nuanced reading
of historical, political
and social events, and social facts. - production
- exchange
- communication
- enquiry
- organization
Integrational analysis
The third level of analytic abstraction involves categorizing ways
in which people relate to, or differentiate themselves from, others.
These forms of integration and differentiation vary with the kinds of
societies that people live in, and are deeply related to the nature
of lived social being. These categories or modes are explained in much
greater detail in the two downloadable files and in James (1996, 2005).- face-to-face
relations
- object-extended relations
- agency-extended relations
- disembodied relations
Categorical analysis
From examining how people relate to each other,
the fourth level of analytical abstraction moves
to analyzing the nature of the categories
of social being itself. We concentrate on the
four categories below. By mapping the dominant
forms of these ways of being in the world we
can distinguish a number of fundamentally different
social formations—tribalism,
traditionalism, modernism and postmodernism.
These social formations have historical precedents
but are not restricted to a particular time
or place: they can and do exist side-by-side,
and/or in tension in the same social space.- time
- space
- embodiment
- knowing
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