The M word…

Methodology -Thinking about storytelling

 

Thank you Prof Megan Crawford [@DrMeganCrawford] for inviting to talk with the PhD students from the research Centre for Global Learning at Coventry University [@CovUni_GLEA] .  Here’s a few thoughts about that conversation…. As requested, I’ve focused on methodology.  

 

Telling the story

The word methodology used to scare me, and it took me a long while to understand its meaning and its relevance to research and writing. After a conversation with my supervisor, in which I explained the difficulties I was having finding a 'paper' trail, he suggested I put these constraints down in a methodology chapter placed before the ‘literature review’. After staring at him somewhat agog, I did just this. Indeed, viewed as distortions, or bad reporting, the misrepresentation of disabled people’s interests in storytelling explained a wider context and impediments to the research.  

 

Who tells the tale is an important consideration in research. Accounts, like reports, annual reviews, or a thesis, are forms of storytelling. As the artefacts of organisational life they represent culture, and a form of textual evidence, that help tell the tale of an organisation’s activity. Stories are our archives, tell our past, the history of our times. Written for neighbours in time yet to read them. As feminists have given voice to women's interests in the she-story, existing he-story probably says more about who has most privilege – if not power. This view of pen- inequality articulates how some knowledge holders have a stronger voice than others, and therefore dominate many narratives.  

 

 

The question 

Ever a moveable feast, the ‘question’ I started with wasn’t the one I ended up exploring. The enquiry started as a hunch:  Why are disabled people not referred to as a group like others?  Why are their allies not viewed as activist like feminists? Why isn't there a more nuanced language to talk about disability? And why aren't there words with meaning thar are equivalent to institutional racism, patriarchy and sexism? At board meetings, I heard accountants call themselves feminists, but how do you describe reports from the position of an anti-what-disabled-people-are-oppressed-by-ist?  Because let’s face it anti-ableist is an unknown to most, and doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue. 

Textual worlds

In research papers I found there was a few sheets where I had hoped to find a library. When I searched through papers with ‘disability’ in their title few appeared before 1960, even fewer in topics that dealt with global matters. Pre 1960’s first-hand accounts of disabled individuals' experiences are hard to find in text. Most research is about them. In the few texts I did find, there was a noticeable absence of theory, reference to studies or equality was missing. From the 80s Disability Studies has been a growing discipline, yet its Key authors are absent in the roll calls of storytellers in tales of disability. 

 

This rejection lead me to consider travelling theory, a management perspective that seeks to explore why some theories are picked up and are blended into other disciplines, and others are domesticated [reduced to acceptable ideas] or never get beyond their own subject writings (Oswick, Fleming, & Hanlon, 2011). It seems that many theories are somewhat blunted by travel, indeed the more divergent ideas they include the more they are simplified or domesticated. Some are rejected altogether when not compatible with the adopting discipline’s existing theory. The question I ended up with was: why aren’t disabled people trusted as storytellers?

 

A legitimacy gap – a missing voice 

The methodology chapter, gave me space to explain a cultural rejection [orthotoxic], a widespread yet invisible force pushing disabled people to margins of communities’ activities such as storytelling. It helped me explain why as authors, disabled writers as a particular group within the writing community, were less likely to appear on the page. This power imbalance, explained how storytellers can be privileged or silenced in research accounts. 

 

The following literature analysis, from a human rights perspective, then highlighted how misrepresentation affects discourse in recognisable ways. For instance, the absence of disabled people speaking on matters of sustainability, despite the impact of economic measures most likely to harm them most. This erasure reflected a silencing of marginalised groups in global inequality more widely, most apparent in the rejection of authors from the Global South.

 

In academic texts, my major concern was the personal cost demanded from disabled participants. Traditionally the ‘disabled voice’ has been interpreted by a more privileged researcher. Viewed as data, individual representation when it did occur, is often stripped of institutional, political and activist positions. Furthermore, texts suggested that research on ‘minority groups’ often imposes an invasion of privacy can be triggering for ‘respondents’. Given that there is growing number of non-academic texts penned by authors clearly aligning to disability rights, why not use these? I love the term rainbow-literatures to describe these firsthand accounts, that have mushroomed in numbers as technology enables  individuals marginalised by education and employment. Viewed as a rejection of these, as poor acceptance of firsthand knowledge seems disabled people's experience has been written-out of research. replaced by an overbearing emphasis on clinical responses to disability understood as illness. No doubt driven by a wider belief in society that what disabled individuals need is care or cure. The storytelling leading people to turn to medical journals, rather than the tellers within groups or organisations representing the interests of the disabled population. 

 

I saw the matter of representing group interest as a question of ethical choice, as it was one of epistemological justice. I decided to turn my own question on its head, by asking what do accounts look like when the key tellers are disabled.  By writing an observation of organisational life, I was then able to use a reflection on it as a story to prompt theory. As a reflection on culture in spare me the ethical implications of crossing personal boundaries. As Spradley (1979) states you do not have to be in someone’s bedroom to talk about sex, it can be discussed in relation to its representation. The organisational offered a deviance in its rare view of a culture where disabled people are not erased but lead storytelling.  

 

Group authority missing in shared narratives

I found that while disability may appear on lists of groups with protected characteristics, disability theory rarely appears in discussion in later chapters. For example, while some authors will refer to disabled as an identity or protected characteristic in their introduction, however if it is referred to later it’s usually positioned as an ind problem. Discussions generally do not refer to the social model, and/or institutional discrimination. Rather than build in intersectionality, discarding key ideas of adopted theory suggests a rejection of disabled authors as knowers. Blending theory in an equitable way could help give increasing definition to the multiple oppressions many individuals face within groups. And  identity is rarely single and a binary view excludes, more generally I noticed many theories domesticated by more privileged writers, who ignore the ideas they don’t agree with, and continue to perpetuate narratives with harmful stereotypes.  The use of ‘and’ maybe important, suggesting ‘in addition’,’ with’ and ‘together’, in blending theories viewed as cumulative not oppositional.

 

The way I read it, Feminism has crossed boundaries that are still resistant to Critical Race Theory. Quite possibly because there have been more academics willing to consider the implications of the former, while fewer have had a nuanced language to articulate their own privilege without the shame implied by the later. Who knows....  Epistemic injustice, with the characteristics of ableism, in research and society, is a distortion that explains a storytelling that speaks to 5 myths the silencing of the disabled population (Kafer, 2013). 

 

Texts, knowers and accountability 

Trying to define my knowledge as writer, not necessarily as an author, was a matter of accountability. Defining my 'gaze' was far more than an issue of individual experience, it was one of defined knowledge-base and professional wisdom. Defining my activism was a way of articulating my sensitivity as a researcher. Rather than assume neutrality, I used ethnographic values [not methods] to express deviance in the world. 

 

Suggested by Sinclair (1995), and accessible in many ways, the idea of a chameleon serves well as a metaphor for accountability. Because, as an animal that can change its colours to represent its surroundings, as the picture illustrates the beastie still manages to represent others without changing itself radically.  With Accountability as an allied position, organisations wishing to represent their communities, can choose to state the interests of groups within texts and conversations by stating their interests explicitly within its accounts – its storytelling.  Articulating shared, or distinct, interests need not change purpose, or existing integrity and vision. Equally a human rights approach, in writing on the authority of named groups highlight the possible erasure of voices within civil rights movements.

 

Mapping dialogue 

I used a graphic, the  web of accountabilities, as an idealised frame to qualify themes in conversation. Each radar indicating a type of dialogue identified by the analysis and accout-ability chapters. The characteristics of each dialogue allowed me to qualify the amount of time spent talking about various aspects of people’s Human Rights within organisational conversations.

 

 

I found that an organisation’s commitment to uphold the rights of individuals from marginalised groups can be apparent in the naming of their interests in text and conversations. Legitimacy may seem accidental from a theoretical standpoint, but accountability was in evidence in most conversations. Critical to human rights, being account-able speaks to legitimate engagement. Naming ableism is a further step, because it is not enough to not intentionally hurt, an organisation needs to speak to the discrimination groups face and the cultural oppression they are disadvantaged by.  Without conversation, and a language describing the nuance, being nice to individuals has minimal impact on social aspects of belonging from a community perspective. 

 

 

 

Reference  

Kafer, A. (2013). Feminist, Queer, Crip. Indiana: Indiana University Press.

Mauthner, M., Birch, M., Jessop, J., & Miller, T. (2002). Ethics in qualitative research. (M. Mauthner, Ed.) London: Sage.

Oswick, C., Fleming, P., & Hanlon, G. (2011). From borrowing to blending: rethinking the processes of organizational theory building . Academy of Management Review, 318–337.

Schein, E. H. (2010). Organizational Culture and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Sinclair, A. (1995). The chameleon of accountability. Accounting Organizations and Society, 20(2/3), 219-237.

Spradley, J. P. (1979). The Ethnographic Interview. Waverland Press.