I did not see my reply to Miles so I will try again...if it appeared and for
some reason I did not receive it then I apologise. This is what I said in
reply to his e-mail...
...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....
Seventh, in your last e-mail you also say that most replies are from
'anglophone adult westerners' focusing on individualism and the personal who
have access to the internet. If the list is made up of those people then I
can't see the problem there. It would be nice to have many different view
points aired and there have been many discussions about how western academic
writing and work can incorporate other languages and cultures but I would
suggest it is more of a practical problem then one of western cultural
ignorance, arrogance and finance. I don't buy into these homogenous labels
of 'east' and 'west' cultures and power dynamics were the power is always
with the west and individualism is a western trait - one has only to look at
the shifting power dimensions in the history of thought to see that is not
true and that behind cultures which appear to be based on more collective
thought, individualism is nearer the surface then you think, but shows its
spots in different ways.
All the best,
Glenn
Dr Glenn Smith,
Research Fellow,
London.
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