Research Methods for Cultural Studies

community. Documentation and analysis takes second place to the establishment
and operation of services and the production of creative works. The
‘research’ itself is immersed in the relations of production and its processes, and
is revealed in products – the films, documentaries, web-based archives and
stories – that in turn provide evidence of the success or failure of the community
activity. Yet here the process of exchange and communication between the
researcher and the research subjects, and by extrapolation between the research
subjects and those to whom and for whom the researcher writes, has been displaced
by a social action or community building agenda. The need for observation
and observational strategies ceases to exist.
conclusion
why observing matters 121
Observation in research is dependent on strategies and tactics that transform
interactions, words and gestures, thoughts, ideas and daydreams into
material forms that can be recorded and are therefore available for analysis.
Observation is not a passive process, but should include active exchange
between researcher and research subjects. Today the researcher’s reliance on
note-taking is being replaced by audio and video recording, and by digital
photography. Digital recording technologies have expanded the types of
activities research subjects may use to represent themselves for the research.
By offering the research participant opportunities for self-documentation, the
researcher is released from some of the personal distress that is inherent in
observational research: distress associated with acceptance and rejection,
belonging and being an outsider; certainty and self-doubt. Yet the communicative
power of the observation is eventually compromised if the research
ceases to take the form of communicative exchange between two different
groups of participants: the researcher and her culture and the research subjects
and their culture.
Participant observation matters because it occurs in a terrain characterised
by insecurity, uncertainty, self-doubt and mistrust by both parties. What is
observed, what it means and how it might best be translated is an ongoing
challenge for the researcher. How they are being observed, what it means for
them and how the position of the researcher can best be influenced also represents
an ongoing challenge for the research subjects. These characteristics
force the researcher to continually experiment with innovative ways of
establishing and maintaining communicative exchange with the research subjects.
It is through such exchange that the experiential worlds of research
subjects can be expressed and recorded for analysis. Observation matters
because it is vital for the production of new knowledge of the many worlds of
experience.