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admits that ‘systematic’ may be a problem for creative practitioner
researchers, as method is often ‘anathema to many artists’ (p. 7),
and that ‘stock of knowledge’ and disseminating it is imperative to
the overall practice.
The text is divided into three parts: ‘Designing the research’,
‘Doing research’ and ‘From materials to the published work’ with
sections on such subjects as finding a project, the epistemological
preliminaries, the craft of research, writing as research, managing the
material, research and other people, research and the environment,
and writing and telling. Each chapter brims over with entertaining
and surprising citations, ancient, seminal and contemporary (e.g.
Aristotle, Ovid, Barthes, Bourdieu, Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, de
Botton).
In the section on ‘Research and other people’, in Chapter 2, Webb
sets out the ethical imperative around ‘research governance and
codes for the responsible conduct of research’ (p. 128), quickly
moving on to the techniques creative practitioners use to engage
other people within their research: interviewing (designing good
questions), selecting participants, survey questionnaires and focus
groups. In ‘Research and the environment’, the writer-researcher
is seen, Webb writes: ‘…not as an objective outsider, but as
participant, as embodied and emotional individual, and as observer’
(p. 151). And she continues: ‘… even the most precise and objective
science is conducted by human beings whose work may be marred
by headaches and hunches, or assisted by their sensory acuity:
sight, sound, smell, tactility’ (p. 152). The three specific research
methods she unpacks in this section are phenomenology, or ‘being
in the world’, proprioception, or ‘moving about in the world’, and
participant observation, or ‘being with and moving among people’
(ibid).
Perhaps what is missing from this text is a step-by-step articulation
of the methodologies for the creative practices. But until the
cultural capital of the creative practices is refined and accepted, and
a universal language implemented for practice-based and practiceled
research, they will be regarded as ‘a poor cousin’ of traditional
disciplines. This text is an excellent precursor to a definitive text on
the methodologies and ethics underpinning creative, self-reflexive
practice and research. Perhaps Webb and her colleagues are hard
at work, as I write.
Sue Joseph
Senior lecturer
University of Technology Sydney
Copyright 2016-2/3. Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. All rights reserved. Vol 13, No 2/3 2016 113