Michael Pickering-Research Methods in Cultural Studies (Research Methods for the Arts and Humanities) (2008)

CHAPTER 6
Why Observing Matters
Virginia Nightingale
Materiality conveys meaning. It provides the means by which social
relations are visualised, for it is through materiality that we articulate
meaning and thus it is the frame through which people communicate
identities. Without material expression social relations have little
substantive reality . . . (Sofaer 2007: 1)
Observation-based research relies on interactions and exchanges between
researcher and research participants, and it is this expanded vision of observation
– observation that explicitly designs and accounts for the impact of the
research process on the fieldwork experience and the data it produces – that
the chapter explores. It is based on the premise that communication is a material
process in the sense that it is something that can be observed, recorded,
documented, analysed and written about. Fieldwork involves finding ways to
transform the fleeting character of communication and social relations into
durable analysable forms. Other research practices – for example, textual analysis,
image analysis, historical research, archival research, market research – may
be used to complement the materials produced by the primary engagement
with research participants. These research practices use forms of mediation
other than observation by a researcher, and usually play a supporting role to the
observation-based fieldwork. These secondary research materials are increasingly
important today because in effect they replace some of the contextual
information previously revealed through the extended time commitment
required by a traditional participant observation.
In observation-based research, ‘exchange’ between the researcher and the
research subjects is the medium that assists the transformation of ideas and
thoughts into the words and activities recorded. Exchange also acts as a corrective
to the assumptions inherent in the researcher (his or her predisposition
to counter-transference) that might otherwise be projected onto the research