Ermmm....interesting response which says a little about why many people not
involved in research are unsure of it....
First, I'm not sure why it is ever important to stress the right of the tax
paying public to have their say in what they fund. If that was the case,
many minorities would have gone to dust years ago. Economic contribution to
society does not and should not equal a right in what is or is not decided
upon for the good of society.
Second, it is often assumed that those involved in research are weighing up
the pros and cons but it has been made clear in the past two decades that
much research is not at all as objective as it often would like us to
believe. Certainly in disability research there has been a hierarchy of
sometimes "God" like figures and dominant groups who have dominated the
agenda to the detriment of others. Disability research has been no different
to the politics of feminist and ethnic researchers who, after many 'shouts'
from people on the margins of their cause, realised that there were
differences in the difference.
Third, I think you overstate the case and the imortance of our humble
contributions to human knowledge when you claim that people are after the
researchers blood if he commits 'violence' on long held beliefs. I wish my
work like many others was taken so seriously.
Fourth, I agree from one of the other replies on this list that there seems
a definite them and us undertone to suggesting that researchers have become
tiresome and lead such busy lives that to occasionally listen to those they
research beyond the research schedule is irksome and boring. It aslo sounds
a very masculine response to attempting to reconcile 'the emotional' within
research that is always there. In addition it sounds like you're saying that
disability scholars have kind of settled all the old arguments which is
obviously not the case. Many loose ends still remain in how people not only
deal with the complexity and contridictions within disability knowledges but
also how they marry up theories and academic knowledge within their own
lives.
Fifth, I remember when I first started conducting life stories as a research
method I was guided by previous research using life stories that suggested I
needed to find articulate people who could tell a good story in order to
have the data to explore the research on disability that I was condudting.
However, after an experience of interviewing one young man who had great
difficultiy articulating his life and had led a very 'uninteresting' life by
conventional standards I realised when I re-read his story that his story
was as rich as anybodies in allowing me to understand the social world that
some disabled people live in. It was a humbling lesson in allowing everyone
to have their say, no matter how small or what you think as trivial, that I
have never forgotten in any of the research that I do.
Sixth, as a professional researcher who is very busy and engaged in
different kinds of research, I will continue to make the time to listen and
contribute to this list and the wide range of viewpoints that are expressed,
that I never really found in the journal papers - those same disability
papers that ironically made me angry as a researcher for their lack of
awareness of the internal politics of disability that excluded many voices.
Sometimes in the noise, shouting, emotion and the repeated thrashing out of
ideas from the heady mix of professional researchers and whoever else may
wish to contribute a fresh idea may emerge. Why dismiss that possibility.
That is true democracy and it is from this eclatic mix that fresh ideas to
unresolved questions may occur, either at a group level or for that matter
the individual who contributes and maybe for those grappling for the first
time as to how, as a disabled person, they can marry their individual lives
with social theory, never an easy task even for the professionals....
All the best,
Glenn
Dr Glenn Smith,
Research Fellow,
London.
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