Transcript Mutuality in the research encounter: some reflections on

Mutuality in the research encounter:
some reflections on the ethico-politics
of conducting interviews
LYDIA LEWIS
CENTRE FOR DEVELOPMENTAL AND APPLIED
RESEARCH IN EDUCATION
INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF WOLVERHAMPTON
[email protected]
Mutual recovery through communities of creative
connection: The roles of adult community learning and
community arts initiatives
 Partnership with the Workers’ Educational Association and
collaboration with two London-based community arts
projects.
 Project team: Lydia Lewis, University of Wolverhampton;
Jerry Tew, University of Birmingham; Tony Devaney,
Suresearch service user group; Kathryn Ecclestone, University
of Sheffield; Helen Spandler, University of Central
Lancashire; Janet Wallcraft, University of Wolverhampton;
Clare White, Workers’ Educational Association
 Research methods: participant observation, interviews and
focus groups.
 Project web site: www.wlv.ac.uk/connectedcommunities
Aim:
 To explore the ways in which creative practice and
mutuality within adult community learning and
community arts settings can help to achieve
emancipatory or empowering spaces, discourses and
opportunities which support mental health recovery
and wellbeing for a range of people involved.
Key issues
 Whose interests are being served by the research?
 Ethics surrounding ‘faking friendship and doing
rapport’ (Duncombe & Jessop, 2002)
 Socio-political context of mental health and mental
health services
 The responsibility of the researcher
Service context: critique
 Diagnosis and treatment-led mental health system
 Psychological therapeutic approaches may overlook
socio-political dimensions of experience
 ‘Anaesthetic’ arts interventions
 Sublimation of feminist perspectives
 Need to make the link between personal experiences
and social structures
An interactive, reciprocal and responsive approach to
research interviewing: Philosophical underpinnings
 Social constructionist understanding
 Critical realist not relativist
 Strong reflexivity
 Praxis-oriented
Women interviewing women
 Oakley – a contradiction in terms
 Minimal social distance
 Ethical problems associated with the ‘ideal feminist
research relationship’
… the irony I now perceive is that [the feminist]
ethnographic method exposes subjects to far
greater danger and exploitation than do more
positivist, abstract, and “masculinist” research
methods. The greater the intimacy, the apparent
mutuality of the researcher/re-searched
relationship, the greater is the danger. (from
‘Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography?’ Stacey,
1988: 21)
Negotiating an ethical approach in
feminist qualitative interviewing
 Lather – praxis; a dialogic, reciprocally educative
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encounter
Kelly – reflecting differently on experience/ opening
up different ways of understanding
Opie - opportunity for reflection and re-evaluation
Skeggs – offer any knowledge and information which
may be useful to the researched
Lewis - epistemic authority, gender salience and
permission to speak about gender
Duncombe and Jessop - managing consent
Doucet and Mauthner – place concern with
relationships
Interviews as therapeutic encounters
 Difference between research and therapeutic
interviews (Kvale)
 Bearing enlightened witness (Miller)
Participant 1
I: … do you think that there are advantages to a mental health focused
project like this?
IV: Well, it's supportive. At the moment I need the support. Having
said that, I wish I was outside of it in terms of art, and I'm kind of
dependent on it in terms of mental health, so I'm sort of - what's the
word? I: In conflict or whateverIV: Exactly! Exactly. I mean, I'm sort of giving conflicting messages.
Yes, I'm quite dependent on it and I've been in the system for quite a
few years now and I feel like I don’t really want to leave it in terms of
the support that I get. (…)
I: So maybe the strategy, as you say, is that sort of initial distancing
from the kind of mental health focus on projects is quite a good
strategy to well, start doing other things and kind of progress on and
then see where that takes you, because you can't sort of necessarily
[IV: But I'm scared] take the big leap all at once.
Participant 1 cont.
IV: Yes, it does, but it's such a big commitment and it's
really quite scary, and I don’t know if I'm really ready for it
yet. (…) She did ask me do you want to do this now, and I
said yes. [Laughs] But I'm thinking maybe not. Maybe in a
year or two.
I: But there's always a tendency, I think, to sort of feel like
that, isn't there? Think oh god, am I ready. I don’t know,
whether it's worth just going for it, sometimes [IV: Yes,
yes] because I think sometimes, especially for women, I
suppose they have, obviously, things like women's
mentoring schemes, because women are much more likely
to be sort of [IV: Scared] constantly - Yes, delaying. It's
like applying for promotion at work. …
Participant 1 cont.
IV: When I said yes to it starting now, or starting soon in a few weeks, I was really thinking
well maybe in the meantime if I delayed it for a year or two the DSS will want me to do…will
force me to do a job that I couldn’t cope with and that I would be really unhappy with, and
I'd rather do this now and at least be doing something that I enjoy. But I don’t know
whether I can sell my work. I don’t know.
(…)
I: No, it's very hard to make a living, I would imagine, in the field, [I: Yes] until you get
established and so on. But I imagine it's quite a good thing to do, because again, I think
that's the benefit as well of the women's sector. I mean, I think it's one of the sort of things
relating to women's mental health generally is that the women's sector, obviously you're
looking at in terms of kind of the problems that women face in their lives, whereas the
mental health sector, like you say, all becomes very mental healthy and before you know it,
things become like a personal kind of problem rather than a socially generated one or
whatever. …
IV: Yes. I'm worried if I'm able to make a living part-time, if it would affect me coming here
…
Participant 2
I: It’s everywhere. It’s everywhere isn’t it, yeah. I’m just thinking about, I find
Janet Stoppard’s work on women’s depression quite useful, and she talks about
depression being culturally prescribed for women. That, you know, and it’s, like,
well, whatever you do it’s gonna be depressing, sort of, thing [laughs], you know. I
Just find that quite insightful, you know.
IV: Well, I think, you know, making depression part of an illness or, rather than
seen as just an experience generated by life [I: Yes, yeah]. And I think sometimes
it’s easier for, I don’t know, the powers that be, the government, to say a person is
experiencing all this terrible distress because it’s to do with something wrong in
them, an illness, rather than say, ‘Well, what is it in society that’s giving people
such appalling experiences?’ That it’s easier [I: Yes] for people to say, ‘Oh, it’s an
illness. Here’s a medication to make it better,’ rather than to say, ‘What is it in
society?
I: That’s right.
Participant 2 cont.
IV: What’s gone wrong that makes people experience these things?’
I: Well, that’s right. It easier, isn’t it, to, sort of, like you say, just pathologise
the individuals, rather than actually look at what are the social problems that
are causing it, really. Like, I mean, part of the reason that mental health
services find it hard to, kind of, take a social perspective is, that you might,
sort of, argue that their function, really, anyway, is to contain that distress and
re-label it and, you know. So if that’s the whole, sort of, purpose, well no,
they’re not gonna be able to [laughs], you know, address the actual problems
in a way, sort of, thing. So, it’s, yeah.
IV: I mean, when you look at people’s life experiences, you think, ‘Well, no
wonder they’re suffering the most appalling grief.’ [I: Yeah] No wonder, you
know, who wouldn’t?
I: I know. Well, it’s almost like, as well, when you look at the state of the
world, it’s more surprising that most people seem to be managing to, sort of,
get along okay [laughs] than anybody that’s, you know, in distress, kind of,
thing, you know.
IV: That’s right, yeah.
Conclusions
If we accept that conducting and participating in research
is an inter-active process, what participants get or take
from it should concern us. Whilst we are not claiming that
researchers have the ‘power’ to change individuals’
attitudes, behaviour or perceptions, we do have the power
to construct research which involves questioning
dominant/oppressive discourses; this can occur within the
process of ‘doing’ research, and need not be limited to the
analysis and writing up stages. The potential of research to
create change can become an aspect of our methodology,
which will in turn create more complex understandings of
resistances to social/individual change.(Kelly et al, 1994,
pp. 39-40),
Conclusions
 Link between research paradigms and politics and ethics of
research
 Need to ‘connect how we do research to our theoretical and
political commitments’ (Lather, 1995, p. 301)
 Job of the social researcher to interpret experience in wider
context (epistemic responsibility)
 Feminist practice in research involves listening closely and
responsively contextualising experience
 Qualitative interviews are collaborative encounters
Practice implications
 Acting responsibly requires a knowledge exchange
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approach in qualitative interviewing
For interviews to be ‘useful’ to the researched,
interviewers require useful knowledge & a willingness to
share this
Recognition of the ‘work’ of interviews – emotional,
intellectual, practical - for researcher and participants
‘Situational’ or contextualised ethics & methods
Relationships as central; follow up necessary
On-going negotiation of consent (joint ownership of
data; negotiation over its use)
Feedback from participants as part of evaluation
Questions
 How much can and should we demand of the work of
qualitative interviewing/fieldwork?
 To what degree should our research aims (e.g. to
identify mutual, emancipatory or ‘empowering’
practices) construct our approaches to research?
 How do we ensure that the interests of all research
stakeholders are balanced (more) fairly?
References
Doucet, A. and Mauthner, N. (2007) Knowing responsibly: ethics, feminist epistemologies and
methodologies. In T. Miller, M. Birch, M. Mauthner and J. Jessop (eds), Ethics in Qualitiative Research
(Second Edition), London: Sage.
Duncombe, J. and Jessop, J., (2002), ‘Doing Rapport and the Ethics of ‘Faking Friendship’, in
Mauthner, N., Birch,M., Jessop, J. and Miller, T. (eds), Ethics in Qualitative Research. London:
Sage.
Kelly, L., Burton, S. and Regan L., (1994), ‘Researching Women’s Lives or Studying Women’s Oppression?
Reflections onWhat Constitutes Feminist Research’, in Maynard, M. and Purvis, J. (eds), Researching
Women’s Lives from a Feminist Perspective. London: Taylor and Francis.
Kvale , S. (1992), Interviews. London: Sage.
Lather, P., (1995),‘Feminist Perspectives on Empowering Research Methodologies’, in Holland, J., Blair,
M. with Sheldon, S. (eds), Debates and Issues in Feminist Research and Pedagogy, Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters.
Lewis, L. (2007). Epistemic Authority and the Gender Lens. The Sociological Review, 55 (2): 273-292.
Miller, A. (2001), The truth will set you free . Overcoming emotional blindness and finding your true
adult self. New York: Basic Books.
Oakley, A., (1981), ‘Interviewing Women: A Contradiction in Terms’, in Roberts, H. (ed.), Doing Feminist
Research, London: Routledge.
Opie, A., (1992), ‘Qualitative Research, Appropriation of the “Other” and Empowerment’, Feminist
Review, 40: 52–69.
Stacey, J. (1988), Can there be a feminist ethnography? Women’s Studies International Forum, 11 (1): 2127.