Remember parties? Meeting new people, small talk, bad wine, and at some point, that inevitable question, ‘so, what do YOU DO?’
The best response I ever heard was at an AQR/QRCA party in Dublin, ‘I’m a part-time assassin’. This led to a great conversation covering, amongst other things, job satisfaction, career options and methods of murder.
Thanks to Emmet Ó Briain, I have now discovered an excellent job description for what I do. It avoids having to choose between ‘research’ (too broad), ‘qualitative’ (too complex),‘focus groups’ (too last century) or even ‘perpetually curious about people, I watch and listen without judging ... wait, come back!’
The description derives from ancient Greece, but is highly relevant today. It is the notion of Phrónēsis, a type of wisdom about practical action, sometimes translated as ‘practical wisdom’, or even ‘mindfulness’. According to Wikipedia, “Phronesis involves the ability to decide how to achieve and to reflect upon … ends … (and it) includes a knowledge of particular facts, derived from experience”.
In other words, the true qualitative inquiry means being in-situ, determining how the inquiry proceeds and what it means, using experience, adaptability and mindful attention to detail - a rather good summary of a behaviourally-oriented qualitative researcher today! (*cough*)
However, we are under increasing threat from mechanised, automated approaches such as big data and AI, Emmet argues. (Excellent, longer version here). Clients want less unpredictability and more control, which leads to the undermining and ultimately dehumanisation of research and insight.
I reckon that the pressure to standardise and commoditise qual has always been there; the ten-page 'discussion guide', the notes from beyond the mirror. We have always operated between conflicting perspectives, the client who wants predictability and control and 'consumers' (or people, ie all of us) who want freedom and autonomy.
Genuine insights come from exploring 'the ordinary, everyday cultural ... identities, relationships, and discourse through which people make sense of their lives'. If, as Richard Huntington (@adliterate) complains, there is “a lack of genuine connection with people’s lives (and a) research industry that doesn’t understand insight", is this because we are discouraged from interacting with 'consumers' as people worthy of our careful, practiced attention?
So maybe we should reinstate ourselves as practical wisdom practitioners, if we remember that the real world is messy and detailed and that “the most fundamental obligation of scientific inquiry… [is] to be faithful to the phenomena one seeks to explore”. (Mark Freeman, [2011] Toward poetic science, Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 45)
Taking the notion of phronesis one step further, phronesis is the original form of knowledge according to the philosopher Martin Heidegger, 'a mode of comportment in and toward the world, a way of orienting oneself and thus of caring-seeing-knowing and enabling a particular way of being concerned'. So even as we contemplate the new limescale-removal spray on a supermarket shelf, what we are actually doing is helping to establish the very being or existence (Dasein) of limescale-removal sprays and negotiating shared meanings between maker and user.
So we qualitative researchers can reinvent or rediscover ourselves as Phronesians, which is obviously not at all weird and will impress people at drinks parties. And in case you need a back-up plan, Phronesis is also the most exciting Danish Jazz trio since the Esbjörn Svensson Trio. Apparently. So take your pick, but remember, not just at parties, to stay interesting.
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